Triple Town vs. Zupo! Match Up Puzzle

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Triple Town is an addictive puzzle game with millions of downloads having an average rating of four and a half stars on both the Android Play Store and iTunes store. The key word is triple, aligning three objects combines to form something bigger. The objective is to build up your town as much as possible before you run out of space due to either poor planning or the obstacles, namely those cute bears and stones.

Triple Town

Triple Town

Triple Town has been hit by clones even when it had just started out as Facebook game moving to the mobile platforms, in the form of Yeti Town by the company they granted IP access to for the mobile game development. However, due to the game being virtually similar with the exception of the characters, I will not be comparing the two. Instead, I shall review a newer game which bears some similarity with Triple Town, “Zupo! MatchUp Puzzle”, and focus on the main gameplay modes.

Triple Town vs Yeti Town

Triple Town vs Yeti Town

Triple Town and Yeti Town Comparison

First off, I love Triple Town for its simple yet challenging gameplay which it does through its “triple” mechanism. To start off, the player is made to place a randomly generated object on the map.

As you can see, placing three patches of grass combines to a bush and three of those bushes combine to a tree and so on until you get the floating castle, the pinnacle of Triple Town architecture. To make it more challenging, you are forced to place bears or stones. The cute bears move about on their own, disrupting your great architectural plans for your town. So, you can ‘kill’ the bears off by trapping them, which converts them to a gravestone. And of course, the ‘triple’ mechanism applies here as well. Three gravestones lead to a cathedral, and three of those lead to a larger one until it becomes a treasure chest which gives you coins which allows you to buy any piece from the store, like the crystal which allows you to combine any two pieces or a remover piece to delete any piece from the map.

Zupo! MatchUp Puzzle, the other game similar to Triple Town, sadly does not have much to offer over the successful Triple Town aside from minor gameplay changes and graphics.

Lens #6: The Lens of Problem Solving

 

Triple Town Zupo! Match Up Puzzle
  • Triple has more pieces, like the ninja bear, which generates permutations to the problem. This makes it increasing fun for the player.

 

 
  • This game only has the basic elements, ‘fire’ which corresponds to Triple Town’s bear, the Zupo to Triple Towns buiildings and holes for obstacles instead of rocks.
  • Triple Town’s store allows you to purchase limited essential items with coins you have accumulated to complete the ‘triple’ building and remove obstacles. Learning how to utilize the store effectively to get the highest points adds another dimension to the gameplay.
  • Zupo! Matchup Puzzle gives you a chance to clear obstacles after placing a set number of pieces. Simply put, it is a dumbed down version of Triple Town’s store.

Lens #39: The Lens of Time

 

Triple Town Zupo! Match Up Puzzle
  • Turn based with 150 turns with a new turn generated per set time (free version). Surprisingly, the limited turns concept makes the game fun since the moves becomes a scarce resource. Players are made to think before placing a piece. Later in the game, the number of turns become of less importance since placement decisions make a great impact.
  • Turn based without limit.
    Unlimited turns leaves the game pace to the player and somehow leaves out a sense of importance in placement decisions (although it is a simpler version of the game)
  • There is no time limit and the player loses when the board is full and no moves left to play. The open ended gameplay goes hand in hand with the ‘build your town’ theme which challenges the user to build the best he or she can. The well placed floating castles gives the user a sense of accomplishment.
  • Same as Triple Town however breeding large Zupos just do not seem as appealing as creating your own town and killing off those cute yet irritating bears.

Conclusion

The reason why Triple Town is such a success can be seen just from its basic game mechanism. It reaches the sweet point of being simple (easy to pick up on a train ride or boring lecture) yet complex enough to be addictive (multitasking during lectures). I attest to that having personally racked up points at the millions range during a certain semester.

A few years later and a disappointingly stripped-down version of a similar genre fail to compare to even the original free version of Triple Town.

Links to games:

Triple Town

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spryfox.tripletown
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/triple-town/id490532168?mt=8

Zupo! Match Up Puzzle

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.BluePuppy.ZupoPuzzle

Sources:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120080-6waves-Settles-Yeti-Town-Cloning-Lawsuit

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