Brilliant Crystals is a puzzle game developed by Ninja Kiwi. It revolves around an owl wizard who must use his powers to protect the crystal forest that is his home.
Links[]
The game can be found at:
Controls[]
- Mouse: Move mouse to aim, click to shoot magic bolts, click on potions to activate or deactivate them.
Plot[]
The hero of this story is a mystical owl named Who, who is the guardian of the Crystal Forest. Who wakes up one day to find that some evil creatures called Dark Creepers have invaded the forest and corrupted its power sources - the Brilliant Crystals. This has caused the crystal trees to go out of control and grow crystal leaves way too quickly, so Who takes it upon himself to blast his way through the leaves, destroy the Dark Creepers, and restore the Brilliant Crystals to their former glory with his magic.
Gameplay[]
Brilliant Crystals consists of 48 levels stretched across four forest worlds - Autumn Forest, Winter Forest, Spring Forest, and Summer Forest - with 12 levels per forest. The goal in each level is to make matches with the crystal leaves to clear the edges of the screen in order to find the Brilliant Crystals (though the first few levels will have the Brilliant Crystals onscreen right away) and restore them. Making matches rewards the player with essence that fills up a potion bottle that corresponds to the color of the crystals that were just broken; when the bottle is full, it allows the player to use a spell to help in various ways, like breaking crystals more easily or dealing with enemies. The player has limited time to finish each level (usually 6 minutes) but there are ways to get extra time; each Brilliant Crystal gives you an extra minute upon being restored, and there are two spells that can be cast to get more time. Additionally, the player must make sure that the crystal leaves don't touch Who, otherwise the level is lost (oddly, it's never explained why crystals touching Who results in losing the level). This usually isn't anything the player needs to worry about, but some levels contain enemies that will actively hunt Who down and try to hit him with crystals, which can ruin your run if these enemies are not properly dealt with.
Game Elements[]
Objects[]
- Crystal Leaf: The standard Crystal Leaves come in seven colors, though the game starts out with just three colors per level and slowly builds up with more colors in later levels.
- Ruined Crystals: These are Crystal Leaves whose energy has been drained by the Dark Creepers. They come in two varieties, gray and black. Neither can be destroyed with matches, but there is a difference between the two - Gray Crystals can be destroyed/colored by spells, but Black Crystals can only be removed by breaking all the adjacent crystals around them.
- Brilliant Crystal: The Crystal Forest's main power source, and your main target in each level. Each level can have anywhere between one and eight Brilliant Crystals, with the amount slowly increasing as the game progresses. Clearing enough Crystal Leaves from the edges of the screen will spawn a Brilliant Crystal. Brilliant Crystals in later levels are guarded by Dark Creepers and/or Void Spirits. To fully restore a Brilliant Crystal, you have to hit it with one blast of every color of Crystal Leaf in the level (e.g. if a level has red, purple, and cyan Crystal Leaves, you have to hit the Brilliant Crystals with a red, purple, and cyan blast - in no particular order).
- Compass: This shows you where Brilliant Crystals are located, pointing in the general direction in which you need to clear Crystal Leaves to find them. Compasses start out cold (blue), and will heat up as you get closer to a Brilliant Crystal, turning warm (orange) and then hot (red).
Enemies[]
- Dark Creeper: A sentient vine wrapped around a Ruined Crystal. It occasionally reaches out to other Crystal Leaves to suck them dry and turn them into Ruined Crystals. Destroy it with spells or by breaking all the Crystal Leaves surrounding it.
- Nettle Creeper: A tougher Dark Creeper with thicker skin and even thorns. It takes two spells to destroy this enemy.
- Void Spirit: The most dangerous enemy in the game; it's an evil spirit that will try to attack you directly. Every time you shoot a blast, it moves closer, generating a small cluster of Crystal Leaves around it. If not destroyed, it will reach you and touch you with its Crystal Leaves, ending the game.
Spells[]
Breaking Crystal Leaves gathers essence which goes towards powering spells (represented by potion bottles at the bottom of the screen). Each level has the same number of potion bottles as there are colors of Crystal Leaves in that level since potion bottles. When a potion bottle is full of essence, its spell (represented by a symbol on the front of the bottle) is ready to be used on your next shot, though you can click on the bottle to prevent the spell from being used, this way you can save spells for when you need them. Most potions require you to make a match to take effect, though a few do not. Making a bigger match with a spell will make the spell more powerful.
- Fire Wall: Creates a beam of fire that destroys a row of Crystal Leaves.
- Fire Storm: Creates a bunch of fire explosions that clear away Crystal Leaves.
- Lightning: Sends a bolt of lightning that destroys a path of Crystal Leaves.
- Forked Lightning: Shoots a few lightning shots that bounce around the screen and destroy Crystal Leaves.
- Starburst: Shoots out some beams of light in a star-shaped pattern that destroy Crystal Leaves.
- Giant Fist: Sends a giant fist smashing through Crystal Leaves.
- Force Blast: Creates a small blast that destroys nearby Crystal Leaves even if you didn't make a match.
- Color Splash: Changes nearby Crystal Leaves into the color of your next shot.
- Prismatic Rain: Creates a rainstorm that changes all Crystal Leaves onscreen to a random color.
- Dissolve: Disintegrates some of the Crystal Leaves onscreen.
- Last Stand: Emits a blast that destroys anything that's too close to you.
- Little Time: Adds up to 20 seconds to the clock.
- Big Time: Adds up to a minute to the clock.
- Conduit: Gives you twice as much essence from your next match.
- Greater Conduit: Gives you four times as much essence from your next match.
- Luck: Doubles the score of your next match.
- Favor: Quadruples the score of your next match.
- Fate: Rearranges all Crystal Leaves onscreen, sorting them into huge groups based on color for easy matching.
- Multi-Shot: Makes you shoot three magic blasts instead of one on your next shot.
- Hibernate: Puts all enemies to sleep for a little while.