Jewel Master: Egypt for Nintendo DS

Jewel Master: Egypt is a match-three puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, in which every jewel the player clears turns into material for growing an ancient Egyptian civilization. The Storm City name appears on the North American release of November 2009.

Overview

The game belongs to a run of tile-matching titles that began with Cradle of Rome. Wikipedia describes that earlier game as a Bejeweled-style puzzler developed by the German studio cerasus.media and published by D3 Publisher, released on DS in November 2008. Common Sense Media calls Jewel Master: Egypt a spiritual successor to it, and WorthPlaying’s Brad Hilderbrand goes further, describing it as a rework of the Rome game.

Credits are patchy. WorthPlaying’s own game page leaves the developer blank, GameStop lists Cerasus, and a 2011 WorthPlaying review of the compilation that later bundled this game names Cerasus Media.

How it plays

You swap two adjacent jewels with the stylus so that three or more identical icons line up, and the cleared icons are banked as resources. Some icons sit on blue tiles, and every blue tile has to be broken before a stage counts as finished. Each stage runs against a clock, and Hilderbrand notes that the clock tightens as the game goes on. Later boards bring locked spaces and tiles that are awkward to reach.

The resources are spent on the Egyptian side of the game: food, building materials and treasure go into livestock farms, walled cities and the Great Pyramids, while Common Sense Media mentions camels and villages as well. It also points out that the game gives short historical explanations along the way.

There are 100 stages. Only one power-up may be used per stage, the game hands it out at random at the start, and Hilderbrand found many of them close to useless. Resource drops are random too, which he says pushes players to restart stages until the right pieces fall. He also reports that the tiles are small, that the stylus input itself is reliable, and that chained tiles hide what lies underneath.

Release and credits

WorthPlaying lists 3 November 2009 for the United States and 18 June 2010 for Europe, with Storm City Entertainment as the American publisher and Rising Star Games in Europe. Common Sense Media dates the American release a day later, 4 November 2009, and lists it for the DS and DSi under the name Storm City Games. The ESRB rated it E for Everyone with no content descriptors. Sources therefore disagree on the day, and on whether the publisher is written Entertainment or Games.

Reception

Hilderbrand’s February 2010 review gave it 5.0 out of 10 and called it a dull title that would not hold attention beyond a day, adding that many better puzzle games exist. He did concede that the basic matching is passable. Common Sense Media took a milder line, saying the steady addition of obstacles and goals keeps it interesting and that it may suit match-three fans who tire of the genre midway. It suggests ages 8 and up.

Can you still play it?

The cartridge is a standard DS card, so it runs on a DS, DS Lite or DSi and on the Nintendo 3DS family in DS mode, but not on a Wii U or Switch. DS cards are not region-locked unless they are DSi-only software, and this one is not listed as DSi-only. Nintendo ended 3DS family production on 16 September 2020, so a used cartridge and an older handheld are the practical route.