Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: Puzzling curios, a SNES classic, and a loveable punchy robot.
Some recent chat about the return of Puzzle Quest sent me back to 2009's Gyromancer, an attempt to jump on the original game's bandwagon that's notable for the names behind it: Square Enix and PopCap. It's also notable for being excellent. While not my favourite puzzle RPG of the Xbox Live Arcade era – that honour belongs, of course, to Capybara's mighty Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Gryomancer is a wonderfully refined and satisfying design.
It's basically an elaborate reskin of PopCap's classic match-3, Bejeweled Twist, with some Pokémon-style creature collection, levelling and battling layered on top – and fey, ornate, Final Fantasy-inspired artwork and story layered on top of that. It has to be said, it's an ugly clash of aesthetics, but a harmonious mesh of ideas. The cleverest thing about it is the way it builds an entirely single-player battle mechanic that's just you versus the board, so you're never waiting for an AI to take a turn and your greatest enemy is always just your own lack of foresight or elegance. You can pick Gyromancer up for pennies on Steam and it's also available – and fully backwards compatible – on Xbox.