Wind And Water: Puzzle Battles Online Windows, Mac, Linux game

W&W (for short) is an action-packed puzzle game created by indie developer Yuan Works, featuring hand-crafted pixel art, tight gameplay mechanics and multiple diverse game modes.

BACKGROUND:

W&W was originally developed only by a team of two — brothers Yuan-Hsi and Yuan-Hao — for the Dreamcast and GP2X. Drawing inspiration from classic arcade style puzzle games like the Puzzle League series and Puyo Pop as well as new-school puzzle games like Bejeweled, W&W iterated on proven gameplay mechanics like chain- and combo-systems to revolutionize them and offer satisfying gameplay for newcomers and experts alike.

W&W: ONLINE BATTLES!

While the original Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles is already available for offline multiplayer, we are ready to bring W&W to new heights by introducing Online Play in Versus Mode as well as the all-new Mission Mode and by adding additional content for the single-player modes!

FEATURES:

• Versus Mode – Battle your friends or AI, now featuring online play in an all-new revamped two player Versus Mode and other new online multiplayer modes!
• Puzzle Mode – Clear the panel (board) completely with a limited amount of moves, now featuring a vastly increased amount of mind-boggling puzzles!
• Story Mode– Learn the ropes and become a puzzle expert in a more than 20 hours long adventure about the creation of a puzzle game with diverse stage victory conditions and boss battles, now featuring additional stages and secret exits!
• New Graphics and High-quality Music!
• Multi-platform support– native builds to play on Windows, Mac or Linux!

>> Official Website: Wind-water.net

>> Follow our Dev Blog: dev.yuanworks.com!

GAMEPLAY:

At its core, the premise of W&W as a tile-swapping arcade puzzle game is very simple: To manipulate the panel, you rotate the Elements (blocks) inside your diamond-shaped cursor either clockwise or counterclockwise. You have to bring four of the same color into a diamond-shape to clear them and any adjacent blocks of the same type. Clearing more than four at the same time is a Combo. Clearing Elements back to back is a Chain.

While these are very basic moves featured in most tile-swapping puzzle games, W&W uses several mechanics and skill-settings to promote skillful play and to remove the skill-ceiling. Combos can start and extend a Combo Timer, giving you additional points for lengthy Time Combos, whereas Chains in the highest skill-setting start and extend a Chain Timer which keeps Elements floating in midair until the timer runs out or you deliberately drop the panel. As the panel always gets filled up by new Elements from the top, massive Time Combos and Chains are possible, with the only limiting factor to their length being the players skill.

W&W also features a diverse set of special moves. For example, Elementals are a special type of Combo where you clear multiple different Elements with a single move. Depending on the Skill-setting, there are also Wind&Water Clears, Void Clears, Wind&Water Double Clears, Triple Clears, Full Clears, Deadzone Clears…

…but don’t worry!

Wind&Water’s puzzle system only looks complicated on the surface and is actually really easy to learn. It’s just hard to master. And if you are new, Amy will take your hand and lead you through the Story Mode, which slowly eases you into deeper gameplay mechanics and makes sure you understood the satisfying basics before it asks you to do an awesome 4x Time Chain with a 20x Time Combo Super Cancel all by yourself!