Rating: 4+
Genre: Puzzle
Number of Players: 1
Publisher: Candystand
Release Date: Posted Jan. 7, 2010
Cost: $1.99

BUY

MatchMaker’s rules are simple: Touch board pieces to rotate them 90°, match halves, and then they disappear and you get points and a tiny amount of time added to the clock. Got it? Good, ’cause there’s a little more.

Get one match of each color, and you get a bonus. And this isn’t Bejeweled – you can actually rotate pieces in advance and set up some pretty epic chains.

That means you have pretty much two play style options: Either set lots of chains up and hopefully get all of your time back when you finally turn the key, or just do things as you see them and let bonuses happen when they happen. Me, I tend to choose the second method, and I think that’s turned out just fine, since my leaderboards have me at fifth place…among, you know, everyone.

How do I know that? Well, MatchMaker utilizes OpenFeint, like lots of other games in the App Store. I can see what my Twitter and Facebook friends are playing and compare scores. But back to the rules.

Occasionally, a spinning bonus piece pops up. The faster the spin, the more points it’s worth, so stop it at the right point and make a match to get the points and a few more precious seconds added to the clock.

Is there much more to it? No. Make matches, rack up the points, and compete against your friends. It’s incredibly fun and a good timewaster. The best part is that you basically choose how long you want to play. Not necessarily as a starting variable, like “I want to play for five minutes,” but when you don’t want to play anymore, you can quit or just let the counter go down to zero. Yeah, sometimes it just ends whether you want it to or not because you run out of time and can’t make a match quickly enough, but if you want to quit early, there are options for that.

I highly recommend this because it’s simple and pretty much endless fun. Of course, it’s easy enough to say that, but if you’re still on the fence, why not give it a try yourself with Candystand’s original Flash version here?

This game was provided for review by Candystand and does not affect the outcome of this review.