by Darryl Mah

Created on: January 21, 2008

Deep Blue Sea takes Bejeweled style game play and gives it an under water theme. Instead of shifting colored gems, you are moving sea creatures about the screen. However, that is not the only difference between these two games. Deep Blue Sea offers a small story line with the game, along with a few power ups and buy-able items to help you clear your way through 130 stages.

Do not expect a Steven King performance here, the story line is pretty basic. You, a deep sea diver, out in search for hidden treasure, 7 lost amulets. Thankful you will be able to skip through the story line making it a quick and painless experience.

Deep Blue Sea is much more complex and in-depth than other similar puzzle games. Instead of mindless clicking to clear the puzzle and rack up points, you actually have an objective in this game. Through out each of the puzzles are placed, a diver, a piece of the lost amulets, and the occasional hidden map. This is what makes Deep Blue Sea unique, you will attempt to clear these objects path to the bottom of the screen. Only until after you have successfully collected all the objects will the stage be cleared. Oh, don't take to long either, you are under water with a limited supply of air.

Money collected from clearing each stage can be used for upgrades or items to help you, should you find yourself in need. Buying a tank of oxygen will give you more time and a mine will clear the way for your items decent to the bottom.

Each amulet that you put back together becomes a helpful tool in your search to uncover all 7 of them.

Game Play Score: 4/5
Simple point and click controls are very easy and also a bit unsatisfying. Clearing out creatures of the sea can become a bit tiresome after prolonged play. Still, Deep Blue Sea offers a lot more than Bejeweled in the game play department.

Graphics Score: 2/5
The background images are blurry and very plain and the rest of the graphics are only mediocre looking.

Audio Score: 3/5
Audio is scarce in Deep Blue Sea, the story line is written not told, music selection is weak and other sounds, like many other games in this genre, become repetitive.

Creativity/Innovation Score:3/5
Deep Blue Sea offers enough variations to keep it from being called a Bejeweled clone.

Replay Ability Score: 4/5
clearing all 130 won't take much longer than 4-5 hours to complete. Thankfully you have the option of going back to best the high score.

Final Score: 3.5/5
Depending on who you are, you will find this game to be either very repetitive or very addicting. If you liked the Bejeweled franchise then you will surely like this game as well.

Learn more about this author, Darryl Mah.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.