Jewel Keepers: Easter Island is the latest Mini from Nordcurrent. It’s somewhat more ambitious than their first title, Robin Hood, but it’s still a fairly simple Match 3 game. While the most famous Match 3 game is Bejeweled, this is really more similar to the Jewel Quest games.

The basic gameplay is quite simple—you have a grid of jewels, and you swap two of them to match three in a row. The matched gems disappear, and new ones fall in. Repeat until some criterion is met, usually swapping each cell in the grid at least once.

There are basically two different ways of making these games seem different. One, you can change up the basic Match 3 mechanic. This is the tack all the previous Match 3 Minis have tried. The downside is the normal Match 3 mechanic is close to perfect. So anything changed is usually for the negative.

The other way is keeping the mechanic but adding depth around it. Puzzle Quest is a great example of this, having taken Match 3 and built an RPG around it. Other titles popular on the PC will play somewhat like adventure games (the Trials of the Gods series, for instance) or building games where you might help construct a city (like Heroes of Hellas).

This game doesn’t take either approach. It keeps the basic Match 3 gameplay, just complicating matters by having power-ups that explode (I have no idea how this fits the Easter Island theme) and more trickily, blocking off certain cells of the grid until you’ve gotten all the other cells.

While that sounds pretty simple, it actually complicates things a great deal, and the game is quite challenging because of this. On some boards you have very little margin for error, because there is just very little room to make matches. And so, you often get told that there are no more matches possible, and the level is restarted.

There are two modes, Story and Free Play. In Story, you play one level, then when completed, move on to the next level. In Free Play, you simply pick a layout that you’ve unlocked in Story mode and use that over and over until the game ends. The high score is kept for each layout.

While it’s called Story Mode, there really isn’t much of a story at all. You get a few lines of text and a couple of pictures every 10th level or so. It’s rather nonsensical and features a ridiculous cast of characters, supposedly a professor and his granddaughter, who help a young island girl.

But, they look more like Colonel Klink, Pippi Longstocking, and Kim Fields, respectively. The only time you ever really see them is when they pop up to tell you that you can’t make that move or when the story is beaten. But when they pop up, I can’t help but burst out laughing. If not for the lack of Tor Johnson, you’d think you’d find Ed Wood in the credits.

The story doesn’t have any effect on the gameplay. Many of these games are cleverly designed, in that they tie in what’s happening in the story with the gameplay. Like, for instance, in the story the main character might need an object. So the object is placed on the grid, and you have to figure out how to get it to drop to the bottom. Or, you might need to power up some sort of magic crystal, so you have to destroy a certain amount of crystals on the grid.

There are lots of ways to do it, but this title doesn’t even try. Also, there are only about 40 levels, so it doesn’t take too long to beat. Most of the length comes from certain layouts that are just innately hard. And, since the story is just text-based, they could have written a little between each level. Or at least more than they did.

On the plus side, though, the background graphic for each level is nicely done, and the music in the game is catchy.

It’s not particularly original, the story is nonsensical with absurd characters, and there aren’t a lot of gameplay options—not even an option to play untimed, which is a must for casual Match 3 fans. Still, I had a surprising amount of fun with it, and the gameplay was challenging at times.

If you are looking for a Match 3 game for the PSP (or PS3), then you are better off getting Bejeweled 2 or Seven Wonders, or possibly even Puzzle Quest. They all cost a bit more, as they are regular games, but they are simply better Match 3 games. But if you’ve beaten those and want a Match 3 fix, this is worth considering.

6.5/10