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Test Chamber – The Free-To-Play Pokémon Shuffle
The Pokémon Company has embraced the free-to-play model with Pokémon Shuffle on 3DS, and we decided to take a look and see if the match-three puzzler is unnecessarily restrictive.
Jeff Cork, our resident match-three expert and genre super-fan, and I played the game for a few minutes. The gameplay is basically the same as Pokémon Battle Trozei, but there is a limit to how many rounds you can play consecutively. Similar to Candy Crush, if you run out of attempts you can either wait for more, or you can purchase jewels with real money to keep playing. Unlike Candy Crush however, every attempt – success or failure – costs you one of your lives. Even if you're successfully battling and catching Pokémon, you will hit the same wall as someone who is playing poorly.
You can check out some of the gameplay (and see how much the jewels cost) in the video below.
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