While it might look like an innocent match-3 game with RPG mechanics, Puzzling Rush is terrible, for the single reason that never ever, any mechanics are explained, leaving the player with a bunch of symbols and ‘HELP’ screens that are confusing and impossible to decipher.
To be clear, the basic mechanics of the game are kinda understandable, you have attack, defense and health and you match gems to raise your attack and defense, alternating turns with the AI and attacking each other. The goal is to get your opponent’s life to zero. You can also match fire, water and grass gems to raise your magic, what’s the point of magic, you ask? I don’t know!
Everything is presented in that weird way. Simple pictures with no text and no explanation. What does it even mean? Every grass tiles to the left and bottom of swords and shields will turn into fang medals? What are fang medals? What do any of these spells, stats or effects do? I know I’m matching three, but why would I match magic when I don’t understand what it does?
Maybe someone will correct me, maybe this game was built during a gamejam and the theme was “games for illiterate people” and that would be a noble goal because there is no text in this game… But even then, the rules are so arcane and needlessly complex - in appearance - that even with simple images, I couldn’t get anything of what I was doing. And that drained all the fun of playing the game, I leveled up spells and stats without knowing what they did and fought by matching swords and shields, but nothing more than that.
At least this is easy to fix, redo help interfaces, add explanations about what things do, problem solved, maybe you’ve got a decent game, maybe.