In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Heroes of Hellas

Heroes of Hellas follows the match three gameplay formula, though it changes things up to give the game a sense of being something new. In order to remove different colored gems, you’ll have to click on gems that can form combos of three, meaning that they are attached to each other in one way or another. Once you’ve clicked on your first gem, you’ve then got to slide your mouse over the other gems of the same color in a row, and then release your mouse button to remove them. Though you have to have matches of three to remove them, you can remove as many connecting matches as you can, making chains as long as seven or eighte long, for example. Also, though you have to have three gems together to start a match, it is possible to only use one gem and still remove them and still be able to remove match chains. As you make long matches, you’ll put coin tokens into play, which when gathered will allow you to build your own palace. Building a palace is nice and all, but they are more important since they can be placed in any chain combo, so if you have two coins side by side and only one green gem, you can still make a three green gem combo by connecting the green gem to the two coins.

Though the game is focused on making matches, unlike Bejeweled that isn’t where the gameplay ends. The focus of levels can change from one level to the next, but that really helps keep players on their toes and keep the game fun and refreshing. You’ll start out by having tiles on the board painted a gold color, which you’ll need to remove from the board in order to win; you’ll remove these gold tiles by making matches over the tiles. Besides needing to make matches over gold tiles, other levels will give you these brillliant ruby gems, which you need to have fall off the board by making matches underneath them so they keep dropping down. You’ll also have levels that merge the two together, making you both remove all the gems and the gold tiles in order to move on.

In order to throw some extra challenge in the way, you’ll run across some obstacles as well, such as stone tiles (need to make a match that borders on one of the sides of the stone tile) and ropes (they keep certain tiles in place and are removed by including them in a match combo). As you play and get better, however, you’ll unlock heroes to help you in “battle” (so to speak) that can change the tiles up to help or do other moves. Besides being able to flip a button to rotate and shuffle the position of the colors on the game board, you’ll also acquire tile moves to help do things like destroy all the gems or stone tiles in rows by zapping them with lightning.

After you complete all of the levels of a “world” you’ll unlock a mythology fact behind the hero you just restored, and you’ll then be given the chance to compete in a mosaic challenge, which depicts the story of the hero in question, and you can then use these mosaic wallpapers as desktop wallpapers. The mosaics aren’t hard, as the pieces will tell you when they are in their proper place, as they will sink into the board and make it so that you can’t move them at all.

I’m not a fan of really tough games, but I equally don’t like games that are too easy. Heroes of Hellas rests somewhere in the middle between those extremes, though it leans more toward the easy side of things. Early on, after about ten or so levels, I still hadn’t died once or even came close to failing a level. The only challenge comes from racing against the level’s clock, but for the most part the clock ticks really slowly, giving you plenty of time to get the matching you need to do done in time. Of course, you can make the time factor a non-issue at times by using clock powerups through the levels, garnering yourself more time as needed. It would be nice if the game was a tad harder, but despite that issue there is still fun to be had.

Graphically the game looks nice, as the gems are very detailed and brightly colored, and some of the effects – such as lightning zapping its way through and busting up your gems – are really nice. The animation of gems falling down and pulsing upwards towards the screen to let you know where a match is are also excellently done. The audio sounds good, but nothing amazing. The light tune that plays isn’t bad, but the sound of gems being destroyed and removed from the board sound better.

Heroes of Hellas isn’t the best casual game we’ve played recently, but it’s still pretty good, mainly thanks to its twist on the match three formula and the mythology that you get to experience. If the game was a tad harder and was done a bit better on the technical side of things, Heroes of Hellas would’ve faired better.

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