Spire Blast Review (Apple Arcade & Xbox Series X|S)

Spire Blast takes the match-three blueprint to the skies in a simple-to-navigate, dragon-focused world where toppling wooden cubes and rubber pellets facilitate the backbone of a cozy, incremental puzzler that can keep you flinging and flailing for hours. Like Candy Crush, or just about any other jello-based match-three puzzle game on Apple Arcade, it leans into a familiar stomping ground—a place in which you spend the majority of your time cycling through balls of all shapes and sizes, and targeting colorful clusters in the hopes that something will fall. And for when the spire does come tumbling down, it makes a habit of serving out points, stars, and the occasional world-shattering Power Up, all in the hopes that you’ll combine your knowledge and traverse deeper into its thirty-level kingdom and into the great beyond.

If you’re familiar with match-three puzzlers that use both colorful blocks and Angry Birds–like projectile mechanics, then Spire Blast should feel like a second home for you. Similar to those that have sprouted out from beneath the woodwork before, the game invites you to gradually comb through kingdoms—medieval biomes that each contain approximately thirty stages—and complete simple toppling maneuvers with a selection of colorful balls. Simply, you rotate a camera and target clusters of wooden blocks; the more blocks that share the same color, the higher your score will rise once you successfully force it to crumble, and so on and so forth.

Unsurprisingly, Spire Blast is an incredibly easy game to roll into and play right off the bat. Unlike most puzzlers that force you to rely on all sorts of abilities and progression-locked systems to make your life a little easier, Spire Blast instead opts for the calmer route—a path that allows you to freely roam and conquer whenever you’re in the mood for a simple and satisfying adventure. It’s still a rather short journey that doesn’t make a habit of sticking around past its teething phase, but with enough variety in its level design and challenges, it does make for a versatile experience that can and probably will keep you entertained throughout.

While the initial batch of stages are an absolute cake walk, the game does introduce fresh challenges as the spires advance and the areas become larger, stronger, and more complex architectural landmarks. Say, in the opening regions you have a lot of room to punch holes in each spire, with more colors to stack together and more options for target practice. In the latter sections of the game, however, you have fewer spots to plant your balls, with more unorganized chaos and fewer interwoven clusters to target. This is all textbook match-three malarkey, mind you, and frankly, nothing that you wouldn’t have seen before.

As you progress deeper into Spire Blast and earn more Stars (three Stars per level), you unlock special Power Ups—boosters that allow you to make short work of otherwise tricky towers. For example, the game eventually rolls out a ball that grants you the ability to target any color on the board and accrue additional points for your final score. Again, nothing out of the ordinary here. The only thing that sets Spire Blast apart from its match-three kin, of course, is its inclusion of a dragon, which sports its own motives for being the ultimate weapon for your toppling endeavors.

The dragon, in short, requires you to topple blocks in its path to help satisfy its ravenous appetite. In some levels, this greedy companion of yours will aid your quest to eliminate blocks from each spire, though you do need to quell its cravings in order to beat the stage and earn your Stars. To that end, the game does often require you to think outside of the box. Can you stack blocks, topple towers and satisfy the dragon at the same time? A rather simple task at times I’ll admit, but it adds a well-needed layer to an otherwise familiar experience, nonetheless.

Thankfully, there are no in-game transactions in Spire Blast or hidden paywalls to prevent you from moving further into its world. That being said, the game does often require you to accrue more Stars and currencies to earn Power Ups—a task that frequently involves going back and forth between earlier stages to unlock additional benefits to tackle tougher challenges. It isn’t a massive pain in the neck, though it does often feel as if the legwork doesn’t quite match the bite-sized rewards.

All in all there’s a cozy puzzle game that’s a lot of fun to chomp through here. Granted, it’s a little on the short side, as it only houses a fraction of the levels compared to other, slightly meatier match-three cult favorites à la Candy Crush or Royal Match. That said, with a database that’s frequently updated with fresh kingdoms, expansions and challenges, it is on the right track to find its place among the highest spires. It’s still a relatively small game, but with an original hook and a well-rounded juicy aesthetic, it does make for a real blast in the match-three field. Could it be a better game? Maybe. Would it benefit from additional stages and more Power Ups? Probably. Even still, it feels like an easy game to recommend, especially if you’re subscribed to Apple Arcade and have a few hours to spare.

Verdict

Spire Blast brings the classic match-three formula to the Dark Ages in a beautifully crafted, jello-like world of fantastical pocket-sized art and colorful designs, dragon-based escapades and satisfyingly simple puzzles. Although a lot shorter than your usual cult favorite game à la Candy Crush, Orbital Knight clearly has the framework to deliver a long-lasting experience to the palm of your hand, with enough creative tiers and colorful synergies to span dozens of expansions in the near future.

While harvesting Power Ups can be a rather daunting task, more so when you need to replay the same level several times over to accrue more wealth, the general setup for the game is a lot of fun to work through. To that end, I’d say that it’s a bit of a no brainer. Surely, if you enjoy guilty pleasures and palm-sized pastimes that don’t require you to delve too deeply into your back pocket, then you’re probably going to find just about everything that you need and want atop this colorful pinnacle.