Gyromancer

Players assume the role of Rivel, an immortal summoner who ventures through the enchanted Aldemona Wood. He has been tasked to track down the rebel group Temperance, led by Quraist Kingsley, who have assassinated a member of the royal family. The forest at times magically seals itself, trapping visitors inside, and is rumored to hold a source of mystical power for which Quraist is searching. The game consists of twelve stages, which are large branching maps that allow the player to move from points represented by stars to adjacent points.

Each stage contains its own objectives, from defeating beasts that block the player's way, to solving puzzles before time runs out. Additional stages are available for purchase as downloadable content. There are multiple optional objectives per stage, in addition to a main goal. Many areas of each stage are initially blocked off, and can only be entered by replaying the stage later in the game.

The game was first thought up in 2007 during a meeting between PopCap and Square Enix, which had published several of PopCap's games in Japan. Jason Kapalka, the co-founder and chief creative officer of PopCap, claims that he "half-jokingly" proposed a game collaboration between the two companies that would combine a role-playing game with Bejeweled-style gameplay, calling it "Final Fantasy Bejeweled". Kapalka was envisioning creating a similar game to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, a 2007 video game which members of the development staff of both companies were playing at the time. The idea attracted the attention of Yuichi Murasawa, designer of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and the game began formal development.

To differentiate the game from Puzzle Quest, the gameplay was based around Bejeweled Twist rather than Bejeweled, which Kopalka feels fit the art design of the game more. Other candidates considered were Zuma and Peggle, but they were dropped as the developers felt that they did not fit in with the combat theme. PopCap developed the early prototype for the game, then allowed Square Enix to complete the bulk of the work in designing and creating the game, especially in regards to the RPG aspects. Square Enix and PopCap announced the game in September 2009.

Gyromancer received a generally positive reception from reviewers. While many critics noted its similarity to Puzzle Quest, the gameplay was still described as being "fun and addictive" by Brett Todd of GameSpot, and similar praises were made by Daemon Hattfield of IGN and Eurogamer's Oli Welsh. Welsh claimed that it had a great deal of replay value, and praised the "surprisingly varied story missions". Game Informer's Matt Miller disagreed slightly, stating that while the game had some replay value, it was limited by the lack of depth to the RPG elements of the game.

Although the paintings of the monsters and game world were rated highly by critics, the art direction itself was criticized. Todd called the graphics "murky and grainy" and noted the lack of animation in the battles or cutscenes, in which two-dimensional pictures of the characters speaking "slide back and forth like cardboard cutouts" rather than perform realistic movements. Welsh added that the stage maps were "crudely portrayed". Hattfield did not share those concerns, but did note say that they felt that the portraits of monsters were reused for different monsters too often.