Jewel Master: Cradle of Athena for Nintendo DS

Jewel Master: Cradle of Athena moves the series from the Nile to ancient Greece, keeping the Nintendo DS match-three formula and adding a slide puzzle at the end of each era. It reached North American shelves in October 2010 under the Storm City Entertainment name.

Overview

The Greek theme is more than a backdrop for the menus. The ESRB summary says many of the puzzles use imagery from Greek mythology, and it singles out one picture showing a green Medusa. That image is the reason for the E10+ rating with the Suggestive Themes descriptor, a notch above the plain E given to the Egyptian game in the series.

Cerasus Media is the developer named in WorthPlaying’s 2011 review of the compilation that contains this title. Cradle of Rome, the first game of the line, is documented on Wikipedia as a 2008 DS release published by D3 Publisher, and Athena is listed there among the games that followed it.

How it plays

Play happens on marble tiles. Matching three or more of the same icon wipes the tiles under them, and the board has to be cleared before the timer runs out. Once it is, a special piece must be steered to the bottom of the play area. Resources from the matches are put into structures, and some of those structures unlock power-ups such as extra time, a bomb that removes a single tile, and an effect that deletes every icon of one kind.

Brad Hilderbrand, who reviewed it for WorthPlaying, says those power-ups are carried over from earlier games with new names. The one addition he credits is the slide puzzle that closes each era, in which the player rebuilds a blueprint. In his view the blueprints are poorly detailed and similar tiles make them frustrating.

Retail listings from GameStop mention 100 levels, 15 bonus levels based on Greek myths and 20 monuments to build. The 2011 compilation review adds that some levels ask for battles against locusts, invading hordes or mythical monsters, and that finishing them opens the slide puzzles.

Release and credits

WorthPlaying gives 5 October 2010 and a retail price of 15 dollars. The review does not name a developer or count modes. The ESRB entry shows only the Storm City Entertainment name beneath the title, whereas retail pages write Storm City Games, so the exact company wording differs between records.

Reception

Hilderbrand scored it 5.0 out of 10 on 28 December 2010. He called it generic and derivative, said it fails to impress, and thought 15 dollars was steep for what is inside. On the positive side he listed a reasonable spread of power-ups, a control scheme that mostly works and a mildly addictive loop that could keep newcomers busy for several days. He also complained that the stylus occasionally ignores input, and that chained resources make success partly a matter of luck.

Dumlao’s later review of the compilation treats Athena as the stronger of its two games, mainly because of the battles and slide puzzles, though its gameplay music strikes him as closer to horror than Greece.

Can you still play it?

This is a physical DS card. It starts on a DS, a DS Lite, a DSi or a Nintendo 3DS running in DS mode, and it does not start on a Wii U or Switch. It is not DSi-only software, so the card is not region-locked. Nintendo discontinued the 3DS family on 16 September 2020, which makes second-hand hardware the only way in.