A mix of skill and luck

Although Runes of Avalon is a lot about skills, there's a fair share of luck involved as well: the shapes of the rune blocks that you happen to receive as well as the spells that are activated will sometimes either make or break your game. This is an aspect of all similar puzzle games and is a big part of their attraction - you can always blame your luck for your defeat rather than admit to have lacked in skills or smarts (which I like!). Also, it seems to me that some of the levels in the final parts of the "epic" game rely more on luck than they do on skill - some of the boards are very small and get filled up very quickly if you don't happen to have pieces that have perfect places set up and ready for them.

Fortunately, for the epic game, you can progress in the story even if some level proves to be impossible for your present set of skills (don't worry, they'll develop), so you will not miss the ending of Evelyne's story even if you fail at some levels. Instead, after you have attempted a certain level twice, you can select to skip that level. This means that your score will also restart from zero, but at least you get to find out what happens to Evelyne, Merlin and Avalon!

Beautiful game with only slight problems

Runes of Avalon is a surprisingly beautiful game, coming from a small developer. The graphics are of very high quality, but are complemented with excellent special particle effects (with spells etc.) and sound effects when you play. Also, the music score is clearly the work of a professional and fits the game and its events perfectly. The story segments in the epic game are complemented by pretty imagery and a voice actor who reads the story for you. The story itself is pretty simple (but consists of over twenty pages of text, so be prepared for lengthy story bits!) but nicely evocative. However, the story is the bit in the game that could have done with a bit more polish - you get an occasional missing word or spelling mistake and sometimes pronouns are used where names should have been, making it harder to tell whether "she" refers to Evelyne or Morganne. Also, the story refers to a certain part of the game as Wastelands, whereas the main map speaks of Westlands. These small mistakes and typos don't really take anything away from the game, though.

A couple of other problems include the fact that when I was playing on WinXP, I lost the narrative from the story bits at some point during the epic game and could not get it back even after a restart (all other sounds were ok). Also near the end of the game, the order of events (first jigsaw, then narrative) was suddenly turned around so that I first got the narrative and only then got to solve the jigsaw puzzle. On Ubuntu Linux, the gameplay was identical to WinXP, although I encountered a little stutter periodically - but I think it is most likely my Ubuntu installation that is to blame here. Overall, this is one of the prettiest games I've played on Ubuntu and certainly something I will keep installed!

For every puzzle lover

There are certainly a lot of puzzle games on the market and many of them good. However, Runes of Avalon did something for me that no puzzle game has done since Tetris and Coloris - hook me in front of my computer and forget the passage of time. Given that there are also extra levels and level packs as well as a level editor available for the game, it will certainly offer entertainment for a long time. Like all good puzzle games, it is something that you want to keep on your hard drive and launch now and then to spend some time with - to beat that previous high score.