If you enjoy playing puzzles and couldn’t care less about fast hack-and-slash action, then chances are you will love Age of Japan. The game combines an incredible puzzle entertainment for an entire family with a unique graphical style. All 40 game levels are rendered with Japanese style, which makes Age of Japan twice as attractive to play. A wonderful oriental-style background with changing seasons produces a very relaxing atmosphere.

The principle of the gameplay is to swap game pieces to make a horizontal or vertical line of three or more pieces of the same color. Age of Japan offers you a choice of two play modes. You can opt for the Arcade mode, where you will have to clear all filled cells. The challenge of the mode is to keep pace with time, which is limited. So, always keep an eye on the constantly decreasing progress bar and try to clear cells before the bar level reaches the bottom line. Quite a different type of gameplay is offered in the Puzzle mode, where you must clear all filled cells at your own pace. The progress bar level here shows how many moves are left.

The system of bonuses adds to the game’s replayability. Players will be able to boost their score with Double Score and Triple Score bonuses. If you get a Bomb bonus, you can blow up game pieces all at once. When you are desperately trying to catch up with time in the Arcade mode, a Time bonus may be of great help because it gives additional time to play. You will also discover plenty of advanced bonuses like a Broom bonus that can remove any piece. Age of Japan is gorgeous thanks to its graphics, entertaining gameplay and smooth animation.

Platforms: Win98 , WinME , WinNT 4.x , Windows2000 , WinXP

System requirements: Pentium 200, DirectX 3.0, 64MB RAM, 2MB Video Ram