From Storm City games, Bermuda Triangle: Saving the Coral is a light puzzler with an environmental theme, having the player match up colored pods in order to save and protect coral reefs. The game is pretty simple to grasp, offering basic “match-3” puzzle gameplay albeit in a slightly changed form, and with an environmentally concerned subplot thrown in. The game doesn’t really switch up the puzzle format too much, opting for a fairly traditional experience without many bells or whistles thrown in. The simplicity of the game will make it fairly easy for newcomers to get into, but might shy away more serious puzzle game fans looking for a real challenge.
Bermuda Triangle’s “match-3” gameplay has you sitting in a boat above a coral reef shooting colored pods into others on the lower screen. You must line them up and match at least three, while each piece that you shoot will push down the lower pods a bit. The pods are buoyant and float to the top, and knocking out a chain of pods will cause the others to rise, creating potential combos and racking up a higher score. More pods will also shoot up from the bottom of the screen, requiring you to take them out as well. If you let the pods touch the bottom of the screen, it’s game over. The different puzzle boards in the game’s Story Mode are broken up into short stages, and the gameplay unfolds in a slower pace than other similar puzzlers.
The game’s story is also pretty simple and features an environmental theme in which your character trying to save the reefs from destruction by feeding them with destroyed pods.
The game also throws in some enemies that will try to hinder your progress as you play through its stages. For example, octopi will sometimes move across the screen and turn some of the colored pods black, rendering you incapable of matching them up with like colors. Fortunately, the game also gives you power-ups as you play, letting you do things like use rockets to take out baddies and rainbow pods that will knock out all pieces of a certain color from the board.
Bermuda Triangle boasts two control schemes, allowing players to utilize either the stylus and touchscreen or the D-Pad to play. Since you are doing little more than selecting where in the top row that you’d like to shoot your next pod, either control scheme feels comfortable, and selecting between the two is simply a matter of preference.
Aside from the main Story Mode, there is a Timed Mode and an Endless Mode. These are fairly self-explanatory and standard for the puzzle genre.
Graphically, the game isn’t set to win any awards, but the look is bright and colorful and works well with the game’s overall theme. The sound is pretty basic as well, with a light-hearted musical score keeping pace with the on-screen, but nothing outstanding.
Bermuda Triangle is a pretty basic puzzler that casual puzzle fans should be able to get into. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t feel quite as dynamic as it should and doesn’t pose much of a challenge, meaning that seasoned puzzle fans will likely want to go elsewhere for their fix.
