Success creates imitation, and in video games this is the most apparent in the realm of puzzle games. Casual game creator PopCap started off with Bejeweled, a simple and addictive grid-based gem-matching game. It wasn't long before competing casual game company iWin created their own Mayan-themed Bejeweled knockoff called Jewel Quest. Now MumboJumbo is trying to cash in on their success with 7 Wonders of the Ancient World for the DS.
As a Bejeweled knockoff, 7 Wonders plays as you would expect. Every level consists of a grid of different-colored runes that can be shuffled around to create rows or columns of three or more like-colored runes in order to make them disappear. In 7 Wonders, each level is themed after one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which include the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Maussollos the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
The game plays under the idea that you are actually building the 7 wonders by clearing puzzles. You have to clear runes on every space of the grid at least once, and you have to move a special building block from the top of the grid all the way to the bottom to complete the puzzle, all while working against the clock. The shape of the grid changes from level to level, but while clearing out runes in some of the corners can get tricky, special row-clearing runes that appear when you create rows of four or five runes make short work of those hard-to-reach spaces. These appear every 20 seconds when you are actually paying attention to the game, so it easily kills the difficulty of the 7 Wonders. While the ancient-wonder-building premise might sound grand, it really means that you get a slightly different wallpaper and background music every four or five levels. Even then, the music is generic and the art is uninspired, heavily relying on drab earth tones.
As a Bejeweled knockoff, 7 Wonders plays as you would expect. Every level consists of a grid of different-colored runes that can be shuffled around to create rows or columns of three or more like-colored runes in order to make them disappear. In 7 Wonders, each level is themed after one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which include the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Maussollos the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
The game plays under the idea that you are actually building the 7 wonders by clearing puzzles. You have to clear runes on every space of the grid at least once, and you have to move a special building block from the top of the grid all the way to the bottom to complete the puzzle, all while working against the clock. The shape of the grid changes from level to level, but while clearing out runes in some of the corners can get tricky, special row-clearing runes that appear when you create rows of four or five runes make short work of those hard-to-reach spaces. These appear every 20 seconds when you are actually paying attention to the game, so it easily kills the difficulty of the 7 Wonders. While the ancient-wonder-building premise might sound grand, it really means that you get a slightly different wallpaper and background music every four or five levels. Even then, the music is generic and the art is uninspired, heavily relying on drab earth tones.
You will soon grow tired of the story mode before you work your way through all seven wonders, which leaves you with the very predictable free play mode and the rune quest mode, which changes things up by challenging you to clear a number of specific types of runes before you're allowed to advance. The rune quest mode is one of the few interesting bits in 7 Wonders. There are no multiplayer modes to liven things up however, although you can read a short summary of each of the Wonders.
With much more inventive Bejeweled-inspired games like Puzzle Quest available for the DS, you should not have to settle for something like 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. The lack of multiplayer is a serious omission, and the rest of the game just feels like a copy of an inspired game that we've already played.
Graphics: 3.5
Sound: 4.5
Control: 6.0
Gameplay: 5.0
Lastability: 4.0
Final (Not an Average): 5.0
