GLASS MASQUERADE 3: HONEYLINES just came out at the end of May 2023. After enjoying the first Glass Masquerade and sequel Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions, I was eager to play this one.
Mesmerizing music and beautiful artwork take these games to a whole other level, and HONEYLINES does not disappoint in these areas. I think it’s well worth the US$5 price tag. That said, I don’t like some of the new features.
You can choose the shape of the pieces in each puzzle – options are shard, honeycomb and chemisty – but they’re all based on the same hexagonal cuts (thus the name “Honeylines,” I guess), regardless of the image in the puzzle. In previous games, the pieces were cut along the lines in the artwork, just as real stained glass would be cut and assembled. Standardizing the pieces probably made things faster/easier for the devs, but made the puzzles less enjoyable for me.
Puzzles start with the edges already completed. Doing the edges was one of my favorite parts of the previous games, so that’s kind of a bummer.
There are two difficulty modes – high and relax. The only difference is that you have to rotate the pieces in “high” which adds a tiny bit of a challenge but not much.
Players can now choose between game modes – flood, iris, bowl, classic and random – which determine how many pieces are provided and in what order. “Classic” is the one you want if you want to start with all pieces available, like the previous games in the series.
There’s just one ring of pieces orbiting the puzzle now instead of two, for some reason, which means you’ll see half as many pieces at a time, giving you fewer options to choose from.
You can also choose between tracking various statistics – time, accuracy or achievements – or none at all.
I’m happy to have another Glass Masquerade and I appreciate the devs trying new things, but some of these changes made it less fun for me than previous installments.
~ J.L. Hilton
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