
- 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

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
Editions and related releases
- Included in
- Cartoon Puzzler Bundle
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Collections2 collections
Platform libraries
- Wii U gamesGames
Years
- Games released in 2016List › July–September
- Games released in 2016List › July–September
Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.
