Ludography
64/100
Players5 ratings
85/100
Critics1 review
More scores
Metacritic5 critic reviews
91/100
Metacritic usersuser score
63/100
GameFAQsJust Right
4.21/5
Player reviews
88% positive175 reviews
Steam Deck
Verified
Runs on
Windows, Mac, Linux
Price
US$24.99

Where to get it

Tumblestone cover

2016 · The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild · Arcade · Fighting

Tumblestone

Tumblestone is a casual puzzle and competitive multiplayer game from the creators of The Bridge. Tumblestone's beautiful, hand-drawn artwork will captivate you while the maddeningly addictive gameplay will keep you playing "just one more round" with your friends. At first glance Tumblestone may resemble other Match-3 games, but it completely reinvents the genre into a deep and cerebral puzzle solving experience that you won't forget.

Released
12 July 2016
Platforms
LinuxNintendo SwitchPlayStation 3PlayStation 4PlayStation VitaWii UWindowsXbox OnemacOS
Genres
ArcadeFightingIndiePuzzleStrategyTile-matching
Developers
The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Publishers
The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Modes
MultiplayerSingle-player
Perspective
Side view
Themes
ActionParty
Country
United States
Age ratings
ESRB ECLASS_IND LPEGI 3ACB GUSK 0GRAC ALLCERO A
Languages
Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese and 10 more
Time to beat
25hmain story47hcompletionist

About

Tumblestone is a 2016 match-3 game developed by The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild and published by Nighthawk Interactive. The game was digitally released on the Nintendo eShop and launched for PC, Mac, and Linux on July 12, 2016. It was published on the Xbox One on July 16, and released for retail on Wii U and PlayStation 4 on August 30, 2016.

The Nintendo Switch version was released on October 5, 2017. Since its debut, Tumblestone has been critically acclaimed for its take on the puzzle genre.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Tumblestone is a 2D puzzle game that tasks the player with clearing every square, known as tumblestones, from a board. In Tumblestone's story mode, the player progresses through a map of 12 worlds. Each level has an enclosed space that is filled with colored squares; the player must keep matching three squares of the same color until the space is clear. Modifiers are added to the gameplay for each world, including gray blocks that toggle on and off called "togglers" and multicolored blocks called "wildcards" that when selected can pair with any color on the wildcard itself.

The player may choose to skip levels with tokens earned midway through a world. At the end of each world, the player battles in a "puzzle race", a challenge in which the player must clear a grid three times before the upcoming character does.

Story

Queen Cleo, the ruler of a desert kingdom, encounters colored blocks with faces known as "tumblestones". Cleo meets the Goblin King, who discovers that an ancient artifact known as the "Tumblecrown" exists. The Goblin King ventures to other lands.

Development

While developing The Bridge, founder Ty Taylor met artist Vega Castañeda. In an interview, Taylor stated, "once [he] learned how to make videogames, [he] was always doing it". The Bridge was released on Steam and won in the 2012 Indie Game Challenge for Achievement in Art Direction and Gameplay.

The concept for Tumblestone was invented during a 48-hour game jam, where he met writer Justin Nafziger and programmer Alex Schearer, the latter of whom had prior experience at Microsoft. The theme was "Rainbows and Perseverance". Taylor worked with Nafziger, Schearer, and Castañeda to produce a prototype that began as a Space Invaders-like game in which the player has to shoot three identical, moving, colored ships in a row into still blocks using a specific concept.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Metacritic, Tumblestone had average scores of 71, 91, and 82 for its Xbox One, PC, and Wii U versions respectively. On OpenCritic, the game has a "strong" approval rating, with a Critics Recommend score of 71%.

Tumblestone won the award for "Best Puzzle Game" at Intel Level Up 2015.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Windows12 July 2016Worldwide
macOS12 July 2016Worldwide
Linux12 July 2016Worldwide
PlayStation Vita12 July 2016Worldwide
Wii U12 July 2016Worldwide · Europe 14 July 2016 · North America 14 July 2016
PlayStation 312 July 2016Worldwide
PlayStation 412 July 2016Worldwide
Xbox One16 July 2016North America
Nintendo Switch5 October 2017North America

Editions and related releases

Included in
Cartoon Puzzler Bundle

Games like this

Collections2 collections

Platform libraries

Years

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.