The art style is, as expected, extremely colorful. And since it says so in the title, there are also heavy Aztec and Egyptian themes all around. Everything, especially the menus, are decorated and designed as if one was exploring an ancient golden temple. The gems one has to match are also quite beautiful, and they have a peculiar shine.
The game does come with some story, even though it is mostly a background feature. You are an Indiana Jones styled explorer that is doing his usual job in Egypt, when your assistant gets you a distressed letter from a colleague that she needs urgent help back in New York.
You quickly return to your home in the United States to find your colleague missing, and the only clue to her whereabouts is the last project she was working on at her museum. Investigating the ancient relics of the museum takes the form of the match 3 gameplay, and once you finish a set of levels the story continues and you move to the next locale, where you will have to complete more levels.
While mostly an excuse to give context to the gameplay, it is well told in the form of charming comic book pages, therefore following the plot has its fun as well.
The main game mode is the matching game. To clear a stage, you need to follow a series of steps. First, clear all the golden tiles by making matches inside of them. While sounding simple, there are plenty of things that might prevent you from doing so.
Chained tiles can not be moved until a specific combination is made with them, boxes need to be broken by making matches near them, safes are similar to boxes but require more than one match, and so on. What this game also has, are different items that are not for matching, but for taking to the bottom of the screen. This is the only way to get these special objects, so you should make this a priority.
Other than that, you might also find several keys. These keys, once they hit the bottom, can unlock things according to their color. Within the same stage, they might unlock access to the rest of it, or they might even unlock access to another screen; you see, levels are mostly composed of more than one screen, and you have to complete them all to beat a level.
In the relaxed mode this is a non issue, but in the more challenging ones like timed or limited (limited moves, that is), this is a more pressing matter. Not having the whole playing field in view can make the strategic thinking more complicated, since you can not plan ahead what you can not see.
Keep in mind that in this game, matches are not made by moving the tiles around, but by moving the cursor around a path of the same looking tiles. Therefore, strategy is king, since you can move around matches in such a way that prepares quite the long chain.
In fact, since diagonal moves are not only allowed but encouraged, doing complicated moves that twist and turn is the optimal way to complete each stage.
The higher the score, the better you do, even being able to gain a reward at the end. So you might want to avoid doing small chains only because a golden tile is in the way; a better path will probably present itself if you pay close attention to your surroundings and think about your next move.
Lost Treasures of El Dorado has plenty of intricacies and depth in its gameplay, and it is well capable of urgin from you that sense of having to play just one more round. And with the plethora of levels that can be found in the game, it will keep you entertained for hours on end.
If you enjoy these free games, you will love this list of our 10 Best Match 3 Games!
