App Army Assemble: Galaxy Mix - "Is this premium watermelon puzzler worth the dollar entry fee?"

• We handed Galaxy Mix to our App Army community
• They felt it had tonnes of replay value
• Everyone agreed it was a bargain for $0.99

Galaxy Mix is a cutesy colour-matching puzzler that recently released for iOS. It's rare for this kind of game to be premium these days, so we were intrigued. A match-3 without annoying adverts? Count us in. We handed Galaxy Mix over to our App Army to see if they thought it was worth the price of entry.

Here's what they said:

I like everything from the bright colours to the different objects. Planets, moons, stars… there is a fun Tetris/Doctor Mario vibe - dropping things where they’ll make a match to combine into something else- keeping an eye on what’s coming next so you don’t drop the current object where it’ll obstruct another match. The occasion ‘shake’ feature that lets you settle things to give you more room (and some new matches/combos).

I like the music, though as I usually play it on the bus, I tend to keep the sound off. There are two modes- Classic, which keeps score but stops you when you reach the top, and Zen which doesn’t keep score but lets you play endlessly. I tried Zen but I prefer the challenge and scorekeeping of Classic. Interesting that it comes with an Apple Watch app but I didn’t get a chance to play that. For 99 cents (or your local equivalent) this is a winner. Simple and fun with a great look. This will get a lot of play on my phone.

I'm ok with most match-3 games, so it was easy for me to be sucked in, and only stopping to play the game on my iPhone after an hour or so. Good beginning I guess. I like the Arcade sounds, the chill soundtrack, and the mechanics involved in dropping the stars. It reminds me of those old machines where you have to control a claw with a joystick to grab some toys below, but here you are dropping stuff. You touch the screen to adjust the horizontal position of the claw that is holding the star and let go of the screen, and there she goes plummeting from the "skies" unto another star.

And magic happens, two small stars merge into a bigger star, and so on. You have a handy button on top that shows you the order of matching, and which star you are gonna get next, but it's better that you find out for yourself. This is not available on the watch version of the game. And neither is the zen mode. Yes, we have a classic mode where you lose the game if these stars get to the top (there's a line which you should not cross), and there's a zen mode (on iPhone only) where you never lose and just keep matching stars forever.

It's fun when you get to the sun star, which is very big, but if you take a peek at that button that shows you the order of the matching stars, you'll see that there are two surprise stars after this one. Perhaps the last one takes half the screen? We can only hope. All in all a very well-polished and addictive game. It's very enjoyable to play on the Apple Watch, and I would love to play it with sound, but as far as I know, there's no way to control the volume of games on the Apple Watch, so it is very loud, and I have to play the game on silent mode unfortunately.

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I am a sucker for these kinds of simple matching games. In Galaxy Mix, you shoot a limited number of spacy shapes from the top, one at a time. If two match a new shape is formed, usually larger than the original shape. If you manage to get more shapes to match combos ensue. Once the screen is filled to the top the game is over in classic mode. In zen mode, you can keep going, but no score is recorded.

Really simple gameplay with just two different powerups that randomly appear: a bomb and a shake of the phone to move shapes around. I find the game to be lacking in game modes on offer, and some sort of achievements or goals. A timed blitz mode would be cool for example. As it stands now it is a bit barebones. Still, a game in the vein of classic Orbital that can suck me in completely.

Planet Watermelon is a puzzle game that took me back to the classic claw machines from the arcades where you used a joystick to manoeuvre and drop a claw to try and win the prize down below. The twist with Galaxy Mix is that instead of picking up objects, you are dropping various styles of stars on top of each other to match and create larger ones. The goal is to create as many chains as possible with streaks to achieve the highest score while keeping all your stars from overflowing.

The colourful retro graphics are simple yet have a real charm about them. And the music has a really catchy, relaxing vibe that just seems to fit. There are local and global leaderboards to push you towards greatness, along with a zen mode for those who just want to chill. As a bonus, you also get an Apple Watch version all for under a buck. Simple fun - two thumbs up!

This is a great game which can be played in two modes - classic and zen. The aim is to match two of the same objects and create ever larger planets and ultimately a black hole. The stars, mini planets, etc fall from the top of the board in a way that reminded me of Tetris. As the stars and planets merge and grow bigger your space becomes limited until you reach the top.

At intervals, there are bombs to drop to make more space or you can shake the screen to mix it all up. The graphics are retro and the sound matches the feel of the game. I found myself going to this when I had a few minutes to kill and it never disappointed me. I’d definitely recommend it as a quick-to-pick-up-and-play game with lots of replayability.

I’m a sucker for decent match 3 games but I don’t always get into merge-type puzzlers. Galaxy Mix was an exception as I was hooked almost immediately. The game starts in a Tetris-like fashion with different types of starts and galactic shapes dropping from the top of the screen. You control when and where the item drops but you need to learn how they go together to form other, larger objects.

As you grow your stars the board fills up and sometimes creates satisfying chain reactions as things fall together and match due to the physics system. I also loved the “SHAKE” powers where you can shake your phone and help the stars settle and get more matches. The tunes are catchy and rather chill which I like. This is the perfect game to give one more go when you should probably be doing laundry or other chores. My wife grabbed my phone during my 5th or 6th game and did not give it back for like 20 minutes. For about a buck, this is the most fun casual puzzler in a long time.

Galaxy Mix seems like the perfect spinoff of the popular game Suika Game on the Switch. Here’s my simple review - Buy it! You drop planets/stars down and when two of the same touch, they merge into a larger object. This continues until you fill-up the screen, similar to Tetris. The hook is that you want to see how far out and what “new” object you get to. Occasionally a bomb drops that you can use to blow up an area where you made a mistake. Also, you may get to the point where you can shake your phone, after building up your combo meter, and that mixes things up a bit. The controls are simple and perfect. You can even play this on an Apple Watch for no extra money. I have not tried that yet but that’s just a bonus. 0.99 is a steal. Get it, this is perfect for mobile.

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Galaxy Mix - Planet Watermelon