App Army Assemble: Merge Maestro - "Is this mix of a merge puzzler and a roguelike a winning combo?"

I've dabbled with the recently released Merge Maestro myself after the past few weeks and have enjoyed its mix of merge puzzling and roguelike elements. So, I decided to hand the game over to our App Army readers to see if they agreed. 

Here's what they said:

Merge Maestro really took me by surprise. I was initially expecting a run-of-the-mill matching/merge style game that’s been done countless times on the App Store, and instead I found a really unique genre-blending game that I haven’t ever played before. If you took match-three puzzle-style games where you create chains and combos, and threw in the challenge and structure of rogue-likes with the simple premise of merging, you’d have Merge Maestro in your hands.

I’m impressed with how much depth there is here. With the inclusion of power-ups and special abilities that can really alter gameplay, you’ll find yourself with some important strategic choices. The difficulty feels just right, and the tutorial does a nice job of getting you going. The colourful, clean-cut style graphics and relaxed music fit like a glove. The more I play, the more I discover and enjoy my time with Merge Maestro!

This is a cute game and a fun distraction- but the font is really too small to comfortably read on an iPhone, where most of my game playing takes place. That impacts the sort of ongoing tutorial as well as picking out upgrades and things later on. If you can see past that, then there are strategies that can up your game and get good results. The visuals are nice, and I sort of like the simplicity that it offers in a small playing area. So yes, it’s a nice game, but I think you really need to be a fan of the genre to get much play out of it.

Well, Merge Maestro could very well be a game of chess if you want it to. You just need to decide how deep and how long you want to build your strategy and go into understanding the instructions of every card.

Yeah, you can go about it in a simple way and just play your cards relying on a simple mechanic of “this card deals 2 damage to an enemy”, cool, I’ll go with that logic, and with some other power-up card to try and win, which could have us going for some random luck. If you really want to go into the weeds of the gam,e you need to understand what the cards do very well, and that’s not an easy feat because the instructions for each card can be quite complex. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game trying to merge cards to get to a specific number and get that special card that will clear the board of all enemies, but sometimes a combo happens because this one card triggers the appearing effect of one card and the destroying effect of another which in turn suddenly all attack points are doubled because of a special power card that you have in your hand.

And the screen is exploding all around you with cards being discarded and enemies being killed left and right, and you win. But you’re not really sure how it happened. There are different difficulty levels, which can have the enemies doing attacks and other things which make it harder to reach the boss level and, as I said in the beginning, throw you into your best game of chess in terms of strategising.

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Merge Maestro is a rogue-like merge builder. There is no backstory, and the action takes place on a 4x4 grid. You lay down tokens that are fed to you randomly. If the tokens are the same, you can merge them to make more powerful tokens, which can be used to clear a queue of up to four enemies. Tokens can be upgraded, and after four turns, you get the option to transform a token into a more powerful one.

I actually changed to playing this game on my iPad as it made some of the text easier to read. It’s a simple game that can be overwhelming at times with all the different tokens and transformations. Graphics are simple, and enemies are not animated. I found the game rather boring to play, and I doubt I will load it up again.

Merge Maestro is a game where you merge numbers or tokens to take out waves of enemies. It is like the game Threes on steroids with loads of different variables to keep track of. Thankfully, both the tutorial and the UI of the game help to alleviate. New tokens with different abilities and power-ups are introduced in a random way, making each play-through unique. As a play-through lasts for about five minutes, it is a great game for a quick pick-up and play. One aspect of the game that I really enjoy is the vibrant presentation. It really pops, and makes me happy. Great little merge puzzler.

Place cards on a grid, then merge identical cards to deal damage to waves of enemies before they kill you. Simple and cool concept, unfortunately bogged down by a few major issues. Firstly, microscopic text. I literally couldn't read the token descriptions on my phone; the font is that tiny. And the tutorial font isn't much better. The screen is huge, and all relevant info is in tiny pop-ups.

It also has very unclear descriptions, which significantly hinder learning the mechanics. Here's an exact example at random, English problems and all: "Destroyed. Create 3 Strawberry. For each that doesn't fit, Attack for its Buff value instead."

There's a very steep learning curve due to being thrown into the full game unceremoniously. Text-heavy tutorials that still manage to confuse. Mechanics should be introduced one by one, instead of the very first thing you do being asked to pick between three tokens filled with keywords you don't understand yet.

Finally, it's unbalanced. The RNG-based flow makes winning feel lucky, not something you can actively work towards. And that despite clearly OP cards like Sword+. The game relies on combos, and yet punishes you for trying to form them.

Overall, an interesting little game that feels like a very, very unpolished gem.

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Merge Maestro