Think you’re tired of matching and/or Tetris like games? Prepare to see this genre in a literally new direction.

Sigma ($0.99)

Tetris is a proven concept, but this game attempts to change the genre a little bit with no disrespect to the original. The graphics are great but the horizontal play area is something really unique and fun.

Presentation

The art style of the game is great. The first thing that popped to mind, especially once I started playing it was that this felt a bit like Lumines, and looked like it. As you match blocks, you level up, eventually going into a new “vector”. Each vector has it’s own different art style, and the further you go the better it looks. Everything about Sigma is designed great and all looks / feels great.

Controls

You have two wheel. You can turn the wheels by dragging down, and tapping a block will toss it to the other side.

Gameplay

At it’s core Sigma is a match 3 game. Sigma takes a unique approach at this by providing you with two ‘wheels’, instead of the usual plain field of blocks a match 3 game has. The only way to get rid of the blocks is to match them by tossing one block at a time to the other side. Depending on how many blocks you match at once or in what position, you get special powerups which can help you clear out more blocks.

As time passes by (measured by the counter in the middle), more blocks are added to a wheel. Eventually the wheels will fill up, but it’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen To make things a bit harder you have a certain amount of time to level up, or it’s game over. Sigma has three modes, ‘Sectors’, ‘Time Attack’, and ‘Multiplayer’. ‘Sectors’ is my favorite mode, as described above. It gets increasingly hard, but not too much, and is the most fun.

In ‘Time Attack’ mode you can choose between 1, 5, and 10 minutes, to get the highest possible score within the limit. And finally ‘Multiplayer’ versus mode, using multiple devices. Overall, Sigma is a really fun game.

Suggestions

As it’s become the fashion. the iPhone 4 retina display has spoiled us all, and all our favorite games start to look a bit blurry. Sigma is no different. It’s nothing big, nothing that will impede you from enjoying the game, but a graphics update and iOS 4.0 multitasking would be more than welcome.

Conclusion

Even if you THINK you’re tired of match-3 games, I still suggest you give Sigma a go. It’s the most fun match-3 game for iPhone I’ve played in a while, and trust me, there are a LOT of them.