I’m Still Alive
The Walking Dead needs no introduction. Developed by Com2uS Corp., The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales takes the franchise and, as the title may suggest, pushes it toward a more puzzle-esque direction. Gather iconic characters. Train them. Equip them. Send them out to overcome the hordes of walkers as well as the real enemy: other people. It’s a long road ahead—don’t forget to pack your gold bars.
A Bit Pedestrian
The Walking Dead is famous in two primary forms of media: comic books and a TV series. The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales takes the majority of its inspiration from the former, both in terms of aesthetics and the plotline of the main story. The graphics are very reminiscent of the comic books’ art style. Combined with the realistic audio design, it lends a grisly atmosphere to the title. The main storyline is almost entirely voice-acted as well, using static, comic-like images to tell some iconic plot beats from the original series. It’s not quite a playable comic book, but it gets the job done. The menus are readable and functional, and aside from some tiny icons during combat, clarity isn’t much of an issue.
You Earn What You Take
The match-3 genre is one of the most widespread in the mobile gaming sphere, so saying that The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales is a match-3 RPG probably describes most of what you need to know. You build teams of characters from the franchise and send them into battles in the many events and game modes, matching colored gems to deal damage and gather energy to use powerful abilities. Due to the nature of the genre, the combat can be somewhat luck-dependent. As such, your teambuilding mostly relies on minimizing luck and maximizing whatever energy you can accumulate. The fewer turns you need to spend accumulating it, the more consistent your team becomes.
There are several game modes available for play, each of them offering a slightly different shade of the match-3 genre. Since The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales is a mobile game though, you can bet that every single one of them has its own energy system to timegate the content. You cannot play as much as you want, since every (successful) attempt costs a certain type of energy. Once you run out, you have to wait for it to recharge before you can continue.
Before you can even enter combat, though, you have to build up your base—gather resources over time and use them to construct buildings and improve various aspects of your experience, like being able to craft gear or unlock more trade options. A lot of the resource gathering involves waiting for said resources to be gathered. That, combined with the aforementioned time gating, means that The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales requires a bit of patience to play.
Make Room for It
However, any mobile game that requires patience will offer you ways to skip the wait through real money purchases. The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales is heavily monetized, and anything you could work for through gameplay can be bought directly. You can purchase resources to speed up base-building or character growth. In-game currency can be bought to be spent on many things like acquiring new characters or speeding up constructions. If you have money, you can fast-track progression without limit.
Games must be able to make money, and I don’t have a problem with that. The question is whether it’s at the cost of free-to-play progression. From what I can tell, no, the progression was tuned to be tolerable without any purchases (and a little bit of patience). You will not upgrade your base overnight, and you will not acquire the best and strongest teams right away. But it also won’t take you months and months, and once you get there, it does feel satisfying whenever you reach the milestone you set out to accomplish—before you set a new one and start working towards that instead.
The Walking Dead Match 3 Tales was obviously made for fans of the franchise. I can tell there are a lot of small elements that only fans will understand and appreciate. But despite not having seen or read any of the stories myself, I still had fun with the strategic teambuilding and match-3 gameplay. I think that counts for something. The title is available for free, so if you’re a fan of The Walking Dead or match-3 games—or both—there isn’t much of a reason not to give it a try.
