Jolly Jam for Android: Daily App Pick

Posted By Sandy Berger in App Picks, Features, Gaming, Mobile

BreakingModern — Jolly Jam challenges Candy Crush for the sweetest and most-addictive game in the land. It’s bright, colorful and sweet like Candy Crush and plays well for anyone who has played other match-three games. Jolly Jam is a new game by Rovio Entertainment, the company that created the wildly popular Angry Birds franchise, developed in conjunction with Magic Tavern under the Rovio Stars brand. Jolly Jam is available free for Android on Google Play and Apple iOS.

The Twist

Yet, Jolly Jam has a twist. Instead of tapping or moving tiles to match them you drag a box around the brightly colored “jellies” that most often look like pieces of fruit. The opposing corners of the box have to be the same kind of jelly. All of the same kind of jellies that are inside the box will disappear.

Not only are you changing the game board by doing this, you’re also gaining points. In addition, matching a certain number of jellies within the box will result in special new jellies appearing.

Match five and you get a Jelly Shot that will shoot out a beam matching the design on the jelly and destroy all the jellies in its path. Match six and you’ll get a Jelly Swirl, which will pull all surrounding jellies toward it and destroy them. Match seven or more and you’ll create a Jelly Storm, which sends out lightning bolts to destroy all jellies of the same type.

Bosses and Purchases

Like other candy-based matching games, Jolly Jam has monsters and bosses that you encounter as you play and rewards that you can accumulate. Your aim is to beat the evil boss and save the jelly world, which looks a lot like Candy Land. And of course you have to do this in a certain number of moves.

There are in-app purchases, but I found that you could easily play the game without making any purchases. If you like, you can connect the game to your Facebook account and ask your friends for extra lives so you can purchase some power tools to help you with your quest.

The game gets progressively harder as you advance, but it’s pretty easy at the beginning. In fact, it’s a breeze until you reach level 35 or 40. So if you enjoy some non-mind-bending gameplay you can get to that level without too much trouble. If you stumble, however, just give your phone to one of the kids. They’ll help you out.

At the higher levels the game is a lot fun, as you must have a strategy to deal with the rocket-powered jelly-eating monsters, immovable pieces, frozen jellies and gridlocks. The fruit-shaped pieces are childish in design making the game appear easy, but they’re colorful, visually appealing and relaxing. If you stick it out to the higher levels you’ll find that Jolly Jam is both different and addictive.

For BMod, I’m Sandy Berger.

All screenshots: Sandy Berger