Animals Crash Match 3

Round cartoon animals stand in for jewels in a familiar three-in-a-row hunt. Line them up and the whole row springs away. Later stages drop obstacles into the grid, which forces you to think about the order of your moves before your finger lands.

Those obstacles are exactly where the game changes character. Early on almost any swap works out much the same. Once solid blocks sit in the path that falling pieces take, a single swap on one side ripples across to the other. Players used to dragging quickly tend to stall here until they agree to spend two seconds looking first.

The animals are drawn with big heads, round eyes and one strong colour each: the bear is brown, the frog green, the duck yellow. You can tell them apart without squinting, and that matters more than it seems. Most mistakes in this genre come from misreading a colour on a crowded board rather than from bad planning.