The Forgotten Land

My usual beat is spreadsheets and supply chains, so a match-3 with RPG trappings is a bit outside my lane - but The Forgotten Land kept me at the desk longer than I expected, and that alone earns it a fair write-up. The core loop puts four characters - Alfred and three companions - into turn-based grid battles where matching sword symbols deals damage and matching coloured gems builds resources. It is closer to the original Puzzle Quest structure than anything Candy Crush adjacent, and that framing matters: combat has a genuine turn-order logic to it rather than being pure luck-driven cascades. The RPG and camp management hooks are described as streamlined, and that word is doing a lot of honest work. Each character earns skills and upgrades over the course of the campaign, and between battles you build out a campsite that feeds tactical bonuses back into your roster. The depth here is shallow by grand-strategy standards - do not walk in expecting skill trees with fifty nodes - but the layer is real enough to create small decisions worth caring about: which hero to level first, which camp building unlocks the next combat power. Critically, the AI in battles plays fair. It will miss optimal combos on the board, which removes the artificial frustration that plagues harder entries in the genre. Where The Forgotten Land genuinely earns its keep is variety. Beyond the standard battle match-3, the game rotates in alternative formats: card-matching stages where you flip and pair identical cards, tile-removal puzzles in the style of Mahjong, and objective-based rounds that ask you to clear specific patches rather than simply outlast an opponent. These modes break the monotony that kills most match-3 runs. The dark fantasy art direction - gloomy forests, red moon backdrops, a distant fortress silhouette - gives the whole package a consistent atmosphere that distinguishes it visually from the brighter mobile-style competitors. The weaknesses are real and should be stated plainly. The campaign is linear from start to finish with no meaningful branching or replayability incentive once the credits roll. The difficulty curve is gentle to the point of near-passivity - most players will rarely fail a level, and the upgrade system exists more as a reward loop than a genuine recovery mechanic when things go wrong. There is no mod support, no multiplayer, and no post-launch content to speak of. Steam shows a Mostly Positive rating across a small review base, which reads as a fair verdict: competent and likeable, not revelatory. If you are a match-3 completionist who has already exhausted Puzzle Quest and its descendants, The Forgotten Land fills an afternoon comfortably. If the genre is new to you, the low-pressure difficulty and varied level types actually make it a reasonable starting point - the tutorial does not insult your intelligence, and the escalation is gradual enough that the mechanical vocabulary clicks in naturally. Just go in knowing the ceiling is low. Diego, Scout Team

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