Gemline
for PC (Windows)

Elwood:
Company: Jobline
Year: 2000
Genre: Puzzle
Theme: Abstract
Language: Norsk, Svenska
Licence: Freeware
Views: 19685
Review by Elwood (2008-06-11)
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Okay... first off, this game is in swedish... or norwegian - you can switch between these languages... and it's completely irrelevant. This game is a Coloris/Columns clone - and a very good one! Concept is simple - get 3 gems in a row, vertical, horizontal, diagonal - and they vanish. The original was usually referred to as a “Tetrislike game” although that kind of reduces the concept to less than it is. Coloris (or Columns ...or gemline) requires a different set of tactics and strategy. You cannot make long term plans as you can (try to) do in Tetris, you have to build and let vanish fast - you CAN prepare a larger collapse, but the game doesn't let you this room, you'll run out of space faster than in Tetris. Some might argue it's not as challenging as Tetris - maybe it's not, but it requires a different kind of thinking, not necessarily easier or harder...

In the big pool of think-fast-games this concept - along with the original Tetris-concept - belongs to my favorites. I do notice though that I let the game take control over my skills of planning ahead. While I do know there's plenty of time (at least in the lower levels) to look at the next tile and plan where it can be placed, I usually simply couldn't do that as I found it hard to imagine the lines after the vanishing took place. Might just be me, but that made up for a good challence.

This is one of the best clones I've come across so far - it's been made as some kind of advertisement from this scandinavian firm called Jobline - no idea about them really, they'll show some kind of advertisement between the levels (I think - could be anything... don't speak these languages - one of the screenshots shows one of these, maybe we'll get a translation one day...?) - apart from that it's just a good remake of the classic. Also liked the music although it can get annoying after a while - but you can turn it off (shouldn't be hard to find even without knowledge of the language), so well, no problem at all.

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