## Description

_Vesuvia_ is a “match 3” tile matching game with adventure elements. It tells
the tale of Jake, a young man who washes up on the shore of a tropical island
after his boat is wrecked at sea. Trying to figure out where he is and how to
get home, Jake travels inward to explore the island. He soon finds evidence
that he is not alone, and that the island itself may have brought him there.
The adventure story is told through Jake’s journal and still pictures with
full voice acting at the end of each chapter.

The tile-matching levels simulate exploration and navigation. Each “step” is
performed as a tile-match and the player’s field of view is limited to the
area being navigated, thus giving the impression that the board itself is
moving as it follows the matches being made. Exploration is free-roaming and
only limited to the confines of the board.

The basic gameplay involves switching one tile at a time to create groups of
three or more identical icons horizontally or vertically. As those are
destroyed more icons slide in from various directions to fill the voids.

There are items hidden underneath icons with backgrounds, so the main
objective is to break as many of those as possible so the objects can be
collected. Since the playing field is large and complex with hidden and
unreachable areas, players will be searching in every nook and cranny, so to
speak, to find all the items required to finish a level.

Find compass corners, pieces of equipment, journal entries and keys to the
exit. Also, there are objects that are used one time to cross “impassable
barriers” in the current level. A raft will let Jake cross a water barrier, or
a machete will cut through thick foliage, for instance. When the percentage at
the top of the screen reaches 100%, the level can be finished by clicking the
key on the exit.

All chapters have a “torch” level where parts of the screen are dark until
torches are clicked upon. Each chapter also contains an “animal” level which
simulates Jake’s encounter with a wild animal. The gameplay is basically the
same, but the only objective here is to free the animal from its prison.

Players can choose from a variety of equipment tools which are useful to
explode a small section of tiles or to instantly jump to a spot on the map.
Charge them up by filling energy bottles during the tile matching. The most
powerful bonuses happen inside the levels themselves where fireballs and
lightning rods form seemingly by themselves as the player continues to make
matches. These can affect huge sections of the board with explosive chain
reactions when set into motion.

There are ten chapters named after the various terrain Jake will explore; for
instance, Tropics, Prairie, Cave, Ocean, Volcano. Each chapter has a unique
color scheme, artwork and tile icons. The chapters contain up to ten tile-
matching levels.

To follow the story to the end, play the ten chapters in Quest mode, timed or
untimed. The Frenzy mode offers matching madness with a sixty second time
limit.

Vesuvia