My Downtown

Genre: Match-3 Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

My Downtown is a Match-3 Puzzle game released on PC in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. While this game presents itself as being partly a Management Simulation game as well, this element is little more than window dressing, and the focus is clearly on the Bejeweled-style Puzzle gameplay.

The presentation here… well, even though this isn’t a mobile game, this reeks of mobile game. The 2D artwork for the characters and gameplay elements is fine, but it lacks any sort of unique personality, and the interface is clearly designed for a platform with either a mouse or a touchscreen. These visuals are backed by a whimsical synthesized soundtrack that’s completely forgettable.

Unfortunately, the mobile-style presentation isn’t just visually off-putting, it’s also sadly reflected in the gameplay. Players using a gamepad to play this game will find that everything requires moving a slow cursor around the screen. To the game’s credit, it does support the use of the touchscreen, which works perfectly fine. It’s just a disappointment that apparently only a minimal amount of effort was made to give this game proper gamepad controls.

As for the gameplay… well, this is a Bejeweled clone, all right. It’s not a bad Bejeweled clone, and everything here works well enough. There are even some gameplay elements that reflect the game’s city builder theme, like construction materials you need to make matches near to destroy and manhole covers you need to get to the bottom of the screen to remove, but this game doesn’t do much to shake up the established “Bejeweled” formula.

My Downtown does try to act like it’s doing something different with its city-building elements between stages. This is where you use money earned in the stages to buy streets and buildings to place in a Management Simulation-style setting. However, none of these buildings seems to actually do anything as far as I can tell. It’s all just for show, a way to track your progress through the game, rather than an actual gameplay element in and of itself. Possibly even more than the mobile-style elements, this was my biggest disappointment with My Downtown, as this could have been something to set this game apart in the genre.

Oh, and then of course I need to mention the ridiculous $20 price tag, obviously yet another example of a game priced laughably high for what’s on offer so it seems like a great deal when it’s discounted to $2. But when a game seems like it’s not far removed from free mobile games, even $2 doesn’t seem like a great deal, and $20 certainly doesn’t.

Without any significant additional elements, that just leaves My Downtown as yet another Bejeweled clone, and in this particular case it’s one with bad gamepad controls and an ugly mobile-style presentation. If you’re feeling like a Bejeweled-style game on the Nintendo Switch, this will get the job done, especially if you’re playing it in handheld mode using the touchscreen, but don’t expect anything significant beyond that.

tl;dr – My Downtown is a Match-3 Puzzle game that’s pretty much just another take on the Bejeweled formula. There’s some pretense of there being a Management Simulation-style city builder between levels, but this doesn’t appear to have any bearing on the gameplay and serves no real purpose as far as I can tell. Add to this poor gamepad controls (but decent touchscreen controls) and an underwhelming mobile-style presentation, and you have a decent but mediocre Bejeweled clone that may satisfy players looking for something like that, but won’t do much more than that.

Grade: C-

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