Age of Empires dev reveal match-3 strategy hybrid Caveman Smash

One of the most enjoyable - if exhausting parts - of GDC 2013 was the Big Indie Pitch.

Organised and scheduled by Jeff Scott from 148Apps (or the school master as we now call him), it combined 24 game developers and 10 journalists into a busy 2 hour period.

That meant just 5 minutes per game but even within those constraints, we saw some gems.

Founded by veterans from Age of Empires studio Ensemble, it was a surprise that the debut from BonusXP was a platformer, Monster Crew.

But with new game Caveman Smash, the developer is on more familiar ground as it's mixing up the well-know match-3 gameplay with light-but-deep strategy elements.

It's fairly early in development, so much of the art is placeholder, but as you can see, you'll be using matching to collect resources and then build units to fight directly on the match grid.

It's a neat twist to the genre and we hope to get more information as BonusXP revs development for a summer release on iOS and Android.

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