Patchy Matchy review (ModRetro Chromatic)

I don’t know about you, but when I’m playing handheld, I prefer a simple, easy-to-pick-up game. That sums up Patchy Matchy to a tee, a puzzle game exclusive to ModRetro Chromatic. This match-four puzzle game is as simple as they come, and yet it manages to hold my attention thanks to its cheerful soundtrack, cute visuals and engaging gameplay.

If you’re unfamiliar, the ModRetro Chromatic is a premium handheld device designed to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. But it also has a range of new, exclusive cartridges developed especially for the Chromatic. Patchy Matchy is one of those games — a puzzle game you won’t be able to play anywhere else (unless you have an old Game Boy kicking about).

Given the asking price of the ModRetro Chromatic, I wouldn’t say it’s worth buying just to play Patchy Matchy. But if you happen to have a Chromatic or a Game Boy, then this game absolutely needs to be in your collection.

Start a game of Patchy Matchy and you’ll find yourself faced with a screen half-filled with objects. You can swap any object with its neighbours, either up or down or left or right. The goal is to keep swapping objects around until you’ve got a line of four or more of the same. You’ll score points for every set of objects you clear, but you’ll earn more if you manage to chain together a combo or get a line of five or six.

Every few seconds, a new object gets dropped onto your screen and, like Tetris, your game will be over if your screen fills up. Once your score reaches 999, you’ll complete the game — but that’s not all there is. With multiple starting levels and speeds to choose from, there’s every reason to jump straight back in, and a range of achievements to unlock as you play will keep you coming back, too.

Lines of objects that you match can either be vertical or horizontal, giving you some freedom over your strategy. You don’t really need strategy to succeed: simply clearing lines one-by-one will eventually net you that necessary score of 999.

But if you want to get there faster and rack up a high score as quickly as possible, you’ll want to think carefully about where you build your lines. Making matches of five or six will net more points, as will chaining together combos: if you can make another match instantly after clearing one line, you’ll score big.

It’s perhaps a bit of a shame that there isn’t a bit more variety: maybe some different objects could be thrown into the mix to keep gameplay feeling a little fresh, but then again, that’s the nature of Patchy Matchy: it may be a new game, but it’s been designed to capture the essence of an original Game Boy game.

It does it with gusto: it’s safe to say I’d have loved this as a kid. Patchy Matchy captures the same sort of relaxing repetition as the likes of Tetris (indeed, a game that developer Tom Sutton cites as a key inspiration). And because of that, it’s the type of game that works just as well today as it would have 30 years ago. This type of puzzle game never gets old — and it’s going to be my favourite go-to every time I pick up the ModRetro Chromatic.