From the description, it’s easy to dismiss Evolve: Hunter’s Quest as just another lousy game companion.
Free iOS and Android companion apps are almost a standard for major releases these days, an easy way for developers to keep you addicted to their games and mine your social networks. Some are more useful than others, but when we heard that Evolve was being turned into a match-3 puzzle game it seemed like an awful idea. Who in their right mind would turn a big multiplayer shooter into a colorful puzzle game?
But it turns out it wasn’t a bad idea, and in fact, it’s one of those rare companions that are worth downloading and playing by itself, even if you have no plans on playing Evolve (of course if you don’t- why do you even play games?)
Hunters Quest easily stands up among the other Match-3 games available on mobile, even while falling into their same pitfalls.
Much like in the main game, Hunters Quest sees a team of four hunters tracking down and doing combat with some big monster boss. You’ll track it down over a number of levels, facing a few variations of mini-games but for the most part either battling the vicious wildlife of the world or the monster itself.
To fight them you need to match gems. Each member of the team has their own color- yellow, red, blue and green. (Don’t worry color-blind folks, they have different shapes and icons so you can tell them apart.) Match at least three of the same color and that team member will attack, which is thrilling, as you'll see your hunters firing off their weapons on the top of the screen. These are the actual hunters from the game and they each have different stats, and special abilities that can be triggered after filling up a special meter. The more you match someone's gems, the more their meter fills. There are three levels of abilities that you can fill up- the 1st-level ones typically do some damage to one enemy but if you hang on and wait until it's filled up you can unleash a stronger attack that can target a crowd, or help you with the monster tokens that begin filling up the board.
See, the harder the level the more monster tokens will start appearing. Not only will these get in the way of your gems, if you match them three times you'll trigger an attack from the beast. You generally don't want that, because they can do all kinds of major damage to you, or mess up your plans on the board by scrambling it up. This adds a nice new dimension to the game where you have to dance around your matches and make sure that you time your attacks just right to hit your foes. Sometimes you'll want to hold off on a four or five-gem match because you know you have a harder enemy or boss on the way, and try to play around the board. Characters can be killed off but as long as you have one alive you can keep fighting, and your medic character can heal or even revive their teammates. There's more going on with the strategy than appears at first.
The free-to-play aspect of the game becomes obvious later on as missions start to get harder and harder, the better to encourage you to use the digital premium currency in the game, which comes in limited supply but of course you can purchase with real cash money. The premium currency can be used to revive your hunters when they're killed or give you boosts before a battle. It’s never impossible to advance but you might need to go back to old battles to level up, and it makes it just a little more frustrating than it perhaps should. Still, this is pretty much standard for other Match-3 games and for a free game you can't really complain. You can advance in the game without spending a dime, it will just take longer.
It might be worth it for Evolve players, too. As you kill mosnsters they'll randomly drop crates that contain Master Points, which can be applied towards the unique abilities of each Hunter to boost them a bit in the main game of Evolve when it launches. It’s nothing that’s going to push you completely over the top in the actual game- but you can get up to 10% bonuses for damage, health, accuracy, and other stats. So it actually does pay off to play this game a bunch- there are 12 hunters in total with 9 ranks to purchase each, so it will take a lot of puzzle action (or real money) to unlock them all. You might want to hold off until you know which Hunter is your favorite before spending points.
Evolve fans will also find a handy Encyclopedia in the app that details all the monsters, hunters, maps and game modes in the game, as well as links to videos showing walkthroughs and tutorials. When the game finally launches you’ll also be able to watch replays of your matches in-app, viewing the action from a top-down perspective.
So- color us surprised. Evolve: Hunters Quest is the rare companion app that not only offers a lot for fans of the main title but it also fun in its own right. Absolutely worth your time.
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Evolve: Hunters Quest is now available on iOS, Windows, Android and Amazon Fire devices.
