Talismania

Infobox VG
title=Talismania


developer= RocketJump Games and PopCap Games
publisher= PopCap Games (previously by GameHouse)
distributor= Various
designer= Del Chafe
version= 1.0.173700 (July 20, 2006)
released= 1.0.173700 (July 20, 2006)
genre= Puzzle
modes= Story and Hero (Timed)
ratings = ESRB: Everyone (E)
platforms= Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista (Web version available for Mac OS X)
media= Downloadable
requirements= OS: Win 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista. Memory: 128 MB RAM. DirectX: 7.0. Processor: Pentium II, 500MHz or faster.
input= Keyboard, Mouse

"Talismania" is a puzzle game developed jointly by RocketJump Games and PopCap Games, and published by PopCap Games. It was released on July 20, 2006.

In the game, you play as King Midas, who has accidentally transformed his daughter, Marygold, into a golden statue with the magical Midas Touch. The Greek god Zeus will agree to reverse her transformation if Midas uses magical talismans to create money to spend on others instead of himself, to atone for his sins of greed. To help him with this task, Zeus has presented Midas with a team of builders, so that he can rebuild various buildings and landmarks across the kingdom. This game is similar in design to another PopCap game, Rocket Mania.

The game was designed by Del Chafe and programmed by Wes Cumberland. It's currently only available for purchase at Popcap's official website, RealArcade and Steam, with a 60-minute trial period.

tyle

The game is presented in a super deformed pseudo-anime style designed by Matt Holmberg, of Magi-Nation Duel fame, with an extremely colourful and cartoony ancient Greek theme. The soundtrack, by Somatone Productions, is done in classical instruments, such as the flute, bouzouki (a prominent instrument in Greek culture), harp, and various ancient percussion and string instruments.

Gameplay

There are two ways to play Talismania: Story Mode and Hero Mode. In Story Mode, the different chapters of Talismania are various problems that King Midas must solve. Hero Mode is a timed version of Story Mode without cutscenes and with slight changes to the gameplay.

The player is presented with a hexagonal grid, upon which two or more talismans are placed. Inside each tile is a section of pathway, and the player must rotate the tiles until the two (or more, if the path has multiple branches) talismans link up, causing the tiles that linked them to transform into either bronze, silver or gold coins, depending on the type of talisman. The coins the player earns are placed on a scale, which lists the number of coins the player has earned, and how many are needed to complete the level. The tiles then disappear, and more tiles fall into place to replace them. More talismans are placed on the grid, and the process repeats. Once the player collects enough coins, the level is over and a new piece of the building is constructed. The chapter ends after five levels, when the entire building is completed.

Talismans

There are three types of talismans; bronze "Owl" talismans, silver "Unicorn" talismans, and golden "Lion" talismans. The type of talisman increases the value of the coins that are created. At the end of each level, the bronze, silver and gold coins are collected into a meter that rises according to the total value of all the coins. The higher the meter goes, the better-constructed that part of the building will be. If the meter is filled, the player earns a Star, used to activate Talismania Mode.

Talisman Meter

The value of the talismans that are laid on the board is determined by the "Talisman Meter". On the top of the screen is the eight-letter word "TALISMAN". For every coin that is created, each of the letters light up first to bronze, then to silver, and then to gold. If at least one letter is lit up to one of those colours, that type of talisman will be laid on the board for the next turn (King Midas announces "GOLD!" whenever the meter reaches gold). The meter begins to tick down after the new talismans are laid, going in reverse of the order in which they were lit, from gold to silver to bronze and then to nothing. If another path is formed quickly, the meter can quickly be brought back up to gold before it decreases, but if time is taken to form a long path, the meter can rise significantly in one turn.

If the meter is filled while there is one talisman still on the board, it changes to gold, and three new gold Talismans are placed on the grid.

Chapters

The game is split up into eight chapters. They are:

*Chapter One: Cottage - King Midas builds a home for a poor couple.

*Chapter Two: Temple - King Midas rebuilds an oracle's temple that was destroyed by the Minotaur.

*Chapter Three: The Argo - King Midas builds Jason's ship, the Argo, so that he can find the Golden Fleece.

*Chapter Four: The Walls of Troy - King Midas builds a wall to defend the city of Troy.

*Chapter Five: The Colossus - The Kraken begins to terrorize the island of Rhodes while King Midas is vacationing there, so he builds the Colossus of Rhodes to scare the Kraken away.

*Chapter Six: The Trojan Horse - King Midas helps Odysseus by building the Trojan Horse, which Odysseus will ironically use to get past the Walls of Troy that King Midas built in chapter four.

*Chapter Seven: The Sun Chariot - King Midas builds the god Apollo a new sun chariot.

*Chapter Eight: Mount Olympus - After Apollo crashes his new sun chariot into Mount Olympus, King Midas rebuilds the home of the Greek gods and goddeses.

Timer

In Hero Mode, the game is played with a timer. This timer is a semicircular clock, which displays five sun icons around its rim. As time passes, these sun icons change to moon icons (as the timer ticks down, King Midas announces warnings such as "Watch your timer!" and "Hurry up!"). If the timer runs out, the player loses the level and must either use a continue to try again, or quit the game. At the end of the level, if there are still sun icons between the beginning and end of the timer, the player is rewarded with a Star for each one.

Blocks

Throughout the game, various Blocks appear on the grid, some of them good, and some of them bad.

Treasures

Each of these blocks has a beneficial effect on the game, both to the player's score and coin count, and to the gameplay.

* Bonus Block - If the path goes through the Bonus Block, the player receives a five-coin bonus.

* Power Block - If the path goes through the Power Block, all the tiles above and below it change into coins along with the rest of the path.

* Freeze Block - If this block is used in a path, it freezes the Bonus Chest, causing the number to stay the same for one turn. If another Freeze Block is used while the Chest is frozen, it will stay frozen for another two turns. In Hero Mode, the Freeze Block causes the timer to stop for one turn.

Monsters

These blocks have negative effects on the game grid, and they must be destroyed by making part of a path. Slaying a Monster rewards the player with a Star. Each Monster has three branches, so they can be used to link up multiple Talismans with one path. None of them can be rotated.

* Medusa Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will turn two random tiles into stone at the end of each turn, making them unable to turn into coins. Medusa was a mythological Greek creature called a gorgon that turned men into stone by staring at them.

* Minotaur Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will charge across the grid in a straight line at the end of each turn, turning the tiles it charges through into stone. Depending on how far the Minotaur Block is from the edge of the grid, it can make up to eight tiles useless. The Minotaur was a Greek mythological creature that was part man, part bull.

* Siren Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will reduce the Talisman meter at the beginning of every turn, possibly lowering the value of the next set of talismans. The Sirens were Greek mythological creatures that lured ships to rocky reefs with their enchanted singing, where the ships would run aground and sink.

* Kraken Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will eat several of the coins earned in each turn. The Kraken was a giant squid-like creature in Scandinavian legend that consumed ships whole on the ocean.

* Acid Slime Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will destroy some of the coins already on the scale at the beginning of every turn.

*Red Slime Block - If this block is not destroyed, it will destroy two of the Stars in the Star gauge at the beginning of every turn.

* Epic Monsters - These blocks are exactly like normal Monsters, except that it takes two turns to destroy them.

Other Blocks

These blocks do not necessarily have a good or bad effect on the game, and do not behave like the other Blocks.

* Pandora Block - This block is a mystery. It branches off in all eight possible directions, allowing the player to link up multiple talismans, but when it completes a path, it will turn into any type of block, good or bad. Pandora was a mythological woman that opened a mysterious box which, quoth the game, "contained the world's evils but also Hope".

* Spinner Tile - This tile is like a normal tile, except it spins around instead of staying still. The player can stop it by clicking on it, allowing it to be used as a normal tile, but after a few seconds it will start spinning again, which means that the player must make a path with it very quickly. As well, clicking it too fast will cause it to spin in place, making it unable to link to the tiles around it.

* Combo Block - This block branches off in four directions, and will only work if four talismans of the same kind are linked to it. If the path goes through a Combo Block, the player receives a five Star bonus.

Bonus Chest

The number of turns a player can take are unlimited, but if the player can finish the level in a certain number of turns, a large Gold bonus will be rewarded at the end of the level by the Bonus Chest. A number displayed on the Chest shows how many turns the player has left before it disappears. The Bonus Chest is not available in Hero Mode.

Minigames

Twice per chapter, after the end of a level, some Greek gods and goddesses will present the player with several minigames where King Midas has to turn a number of objects they throw into gold. The objects they each throw all act differently and are themed to each god or goddess. Harpies appear in the games as well, and if they are clicked, they will steal one of the items that the player has already won.

The minigames rise in difficulty as the game progresses. In the early chapters, the player must click sixteen out of twenty objects, and this number rises in increments of four, eventually rising to twenty-eight out of thirty-two objects. As the games get more difficult, the objects are thrown faster, more are thrown on the screen at once, and harpies appear more frequently.

If a minigame is passed, a statue of the god/goddess appears next to the building, and the player is told an interesting fact about that god or goddess. If the minigame is done perfectly, the player earns a large score bonus. Each statue, depending on how late in the game it is earned, will reward the player with an immediate five or ten Gold coin bonus at the start of each level.

The game features eight different statues. They are Artemis, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Ares, Hermes, Poseidon, Hades and Zeus.

Talismania Mode

Throughout the adventure, the player can collect Stars by making long paths, clearing lots of Blocks, slaying Monsters and filling up the value metre at the end of each level. These stars are collected in the Star gauge. When three stars are collected in the Star gauge, the player can trigger Talismania Mode, where any tile can be changed to a gold coin by clicking it. Clicking a Monster in this mode earns a five-Gold coin bonus, and clicking a Treasure earns a one-star bonus, as well as the bonus it originally grants.

This mode only lasts for a limited time, but up to ten Stars can be collected, and more Stars make the time limit longer. However, when the gauge is filled, a 2x score multiplier is earned, and will remain until Talismania Mode is triggered. Each Star that is collected after the gauge is full also earns the player a 1000-point bonus.

External links

* [http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=talismania PopCap Games - Talismania]
* [http://www.realarcade.com/promo?game=talismaniatmdeluxe&src=rapg&tps=geointl_ RealArcade - Talismania]
* [http://www.rocketjumpgames.com/ RocketJump Games]