7 Wonders of the Ancient World Speedrun

There are many games that didn't get as much recognition as they deserved, thanks to Bejeweled getting all of the spotlight.

This game is not one of them.

It's generic. The music is nice, but the rest of the game is uninspiring at best.


And then you get to the level design. Dear god, the level design. It's awful. The first few stages aren't bad at all, but after Stage 4 it starts to get on the side of frustrating.

The bad part is how the powerups go. in most games, a 4 match is a explosion ball, and a 5 is a color bomb. Here, 4 in a row is a row clearing powerup. 5 is row AND column.

The level design is not made with that in mind whatsoever. As a result many levels have sand to clear in hard-to-reach spots. That isn't the worst thing in the world, except for one singular level, one board that completely ruins the game's difiiculty and playablity at the same time:

7-5.

That single level looks like a T with two arms sticking up from it. Those arms are quite literally impossible to get to. Row powerups barely do anything, and you pretty much can't get a column powerup over there. Which means you are stuck with the shuffles and randomizer powerup to make any progress at all.

Those are both RNG. And not RNG that is weighed in your favor, like it does with the stones, it's just pure dice rolls. It almost never clears where you want it. Once you get to the last few squares, you are stuck just making matches in the center, trying for powerups so you get a CHANCE at clearing it.

I died once, and was about three seconds away from dying twice on that stage. It's a complete run-killer at the very end of the game. Like if you had to do a first try SBLJ in the final Bowser stage for Mario 64, but if you failed once the run is over.

Not a good game. This is obviously beatable, just don't die there, but I'm not trying for it. Too sucky.