It takes some serious ingenuity to subvert a genre as entrenched as the mobile match-3 game, but somehow developer Kimmo Factor, probably most well-known for the awesome hack ‘n slash game Barbearian, has done exactly that with their new game Day Repeat Day ($4.99). It’s a commentary on the match-3 genre itself, and in some ways the state of gaming as a whole, and it’s also a surprisingly deep commentary on life, relationships, and your own well-being. I think it’s precisely because such heavy topics are tackled by way of something as banal as a match-3 game that makes me love Day Repeat Day so much.
The game starts with you being hired at a new job, and wouldn’t you know it this new job’s software system is set up like a match-3 game. That gamification is so hot right now! You’ll manage shipments and orders by meeting specific quotas of items matched in a limited number of moves. There are some additional gameplay mechanics that get peppered in as you go, but by and large the matching game here is likely nothing you haven’t seen before. That’s not to say it’s bad though, and in fact there is an extremely entertaining and often quite challenging matching game at the core of Day Repeat Day.
But a simple matching game, even an entertaining one, isn’t enough to turn any heads. The real meat of Day Repeat Day takes place in the chat service that’s part of your work’s operating system. Here ...