GOT 'IM - 10,000,000

This was a nice little four dollar investment on Steam.  Review for 10,000,000 up ahead. 

10,000,000 (henceforth referred to as "Ten Million") is a match-three puzzle game where you try to score ten million points in one round.  You do that, and you escape the dungeon and have basically beaten the game.  But what, escape a dungeon?  What's all this about?

Ten Million is a match-three game that has you scoring points to escape a dungeon.  You play a puzzle game just like Bejeweled or Panel de Pon, but the icons are swords, shields, staves, keys, wood, stone, and probably at least one more icon that I'm forgetting.  While you play that, a little man is running across a side-scrolling space above the screen where most of the activity happens.  In that space, the man encounters monsters, treasure chests, and locked doors.  Matching appropriate tiles helps him along. 

By "appropriate tiles" I mean you need to match key tiles to have him unlock chests or doors and sword or staff tiles to have him attack monsters blocking him.  Shield tiles boost his defense against monsters, and wood and stone tiles go to your resource pile (more on those later).  Defeating monsters earns the man EXP, and opening treasure chests earn gold.  All activities related to both matching tiles and accomplishing tasks on the top screen boost your score.  Remember, you need a score of 10,000,000 to beat the game.  When the man is attacked by monsters, he moves closer to the start of the scrolling path, and if he touches the "wall" of the scroller then he loses and returns to the home area.  You gotta fight monsters and open doors in time to prevent that. There are a few ways of boosting progress on the screen, and by nature the man's normal speed is faster than the scrolling movement. 

In between matches, you can spend gold, EXP, wood, and stone at a rest area to upgrade your abilities.  The latter two resources improve the rooms in the rest area, and you spend gold and EXP in those rooms to improve equipment and learn abilities.  You upgrade your equipment, last longer in the dungeons, and eventually get far enough and fight monsters strong enough to get your score to those eight special digits.  Treasure chests can also give you items that can click on for small bonuses.  Changing large amounts of tiles to keys or swords, healing yourself to stay in the dungeon longer, sensible little RPG thigns.  The RPG elements give Ten million some extra depth and a bit of classic carrot-on-a-stick motivation. 

Ten Million has somewhat sparse visuals and audio, both of which evoke the 8-bit days of the 1980s.  Some of the music is a little annoying, but it didn't bother me enough to quit playing.  Hey, it's a good 5-8 hours to complete the quest, and Ten Million also possesses the high replayability of a classic puzzler.  The whole package costs five bucks (I bought it on sale for $1 off) and it's a safe bet to be even cheaper during any of Steam's big sales.  If you have a PC or iOS device and are in the market for a good puzzle game, Ten Million is worth consideration. 

Games Beaten: 2013 Edition
1. Persona 4
2. Pokemon White Version 2
3. 10,000,000

Targets: 2/13

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I beat Ten Million in late January.  Why has it been in the development stage of post-hood for two weeks?  Procrastination and video games.  Right now I'm working on a review for a game I finished last weekend as well as playing quite a bit of Psychonauts.  See you later.  Maybe in the next day or two.