Woodville Chronicles is your basic "match the colored tiles in a row" kind of game along the lines of many other
Bejeweled spin offs. You can match as many tiles in a row as you can of the
same color. Tiles above them will then drop, causing combos to be chained with a little planning, and a little luck. You can play in the classic
Bejeweled style Swap Mode, where you swap one tile at a time to create a row of the same colored tiles, which will then shatter and give you points. You also have a couple other modes in
Woodville if this ever gets tedious. Group Mode will allow you to click a group of tiles on the board that have collected into a cluster of 3 or more in order to shatter them for points. Chain Mode will allow you to drag the mouse along in a snake-like fashion, selecting tiles of the same color that are connected, but not in a straight row.
You can change modes at any time, but to keep this from being too easy, the tiles on the board will shuffle every time you change modes. You've also got a few special powers that you can use once each
round. There's a magnet that will shatter all the tiles of one color on the board and a little electric gem that will shatter a row, regardless of color, just to name a couple.
Usually, your objective is to shatter tiles, which will shatter the static marble tiles behind them. If you get rid of all these marble tiles, you win the round. Other challenges are introduced, like chained up tiles. You have to break the tiles around the chain to break the chain and free yourself to be able to break the marble tile behind it. All of this is a lot more intuitive than it seems, and you could probably figure out most of the game without the tutorials.
As an added incentive to keep playing, you can use the points you earn from the game to buy buildings and other items to start creating a small village. As the village grows, houses go up, a guy pulls water from a well, villagers come out and work, etc. Eventually magical things start to happen, and inhabitants of the forest like elves and gnomes start to show up. It's a charming little scene, but you can't really interact with it. Still, you do wonder what will happen with each new building you buy.
