I have a new addiction: MUJO. MUJO, and it's (for now, hopefully!) Apple-only cousin OLYM are puzzle games in line with other 'collect three'-games but infinitely more interesting and complicated. Oh, and did I mention the Hellenic gods and heroes are your allies in the battle against ancient Hellenic monsters like the cyclops or gorgon?


the basic set-up of the game is fairly simple: connect three or more squares of the same kind to reap the benefits of them. Pressing down on the combination will combine them into a more valuabel tile, to be combined with two or more others to be either reaped or combined again. The red swaures with the swords bring down the health of the enemy, the rest of the tiles raise the enemy's health back up to its original level but also act as experience points for your three allies--who consist of gods and heroes reaped from collecting the orange chests (which can be combined into silver and gold chests for rarer and more powerful allies before reaping).

All your allies have different skills and advantages as well as a special power, which is wuate in tune with lore. Dionysos will randomly explode piecs on the boar, Demeter will shuffle the stones as if she were arranging the earth, Hermes raises the value of every square, etc.

As for the enemies: that's where the fun (and frustration) is. In the beginning, they are eaasy to beat but they soon get huge amounts of health and the only way to destroy them is to combine more and more red sword tiles to get higher and higher numbers. And you can't just grind them down a few points at a time either--bosses especially regenerate health with every combination you make that's not a red sword tile. So you've knocked off 5000 health from a 13.000 hitpoint monster, bringing it down to 8000 health. you make a few combinations of light green, dark green ot yellow stones and it's health is well over 10.000 again. Your best shot? Combining red tiles until you get to 13.000. Easy? Definitely not! Doable? Absolutely!

There is a huge amount of strategy required for this game, which is why I feel the ancient Hellenic theme is perfect. Had the ancient philosophers had access to this game, they would have had all their students slave away at it, racking their brains on how to possibly get these tiles combined in these levels that do not reset.

If you are stuck on a level, you only have one choice (and while that's frustrating, it's aslo the best part, brain training speaking): grind. There are bombs in the game you can blow up. Achievements and daily logins get you lightningbolds that activate the special powers of your allies or allow you to remove a single square. Lightningbolds also open chests that will provide you with new allies or upgrads for them in the form of swords, shields and staffs. You can't start over on a level, or if you can, I haven't discovered how. you just have to puzzle until you get the required damage collected. It's a true test of skill, patience and determination.

MUJO can be downloaded here for both iPhone and Android and OLYM can be downloaded here for iPhone alone.