Cradle of Egypt is a Match 3 game steeped in Egyptian history. True to its name, you will gather different resources to build your city and honour the glory of your patron deity Ra, God of the Sun.
Enjoy the history lessons along the way!
The game starts with a beautiful cutscene depicting the beginning of creation as believed by the ancient Egyptians. In it, there was only void, until Ra was born from a flower and rose the land, bringing with him the Sun Disc. As he wept from the beauty of his creation, humans were born from his tears, and Ra sent them to populate the land.
The whole scene is animated in gorgeous 2D, and it is very colorful. It really conveys the glory of Ra as the ancients saw him. The rest of the game tries to stay true to this solemn tone, even in areas where other games might take a more childish route. You will see your workers and builders make farms and houses, and while you see them from afar they are not made cartoony. They are, for the most part, human in proportion.
As you play the Match 3 game, the backgrounds are heavily detailed and even animated in some areas. It is all keeping with the theme of ancient Egypt, with even camels grazing and the like.
While the tiles of the Match 3 game are all very thematic, a lot of them also serve a more practical purpose, therefore the images being simple, plain and clear helps in the strategy of that game mode.
To gather the much needed resources, you will have to play the Match 3 game, as stated before. You can expect the classic style of these games; match three or more tiles to make them disappear, match more for different bonuses and combos, and make the golden tiles go away.
Where this game differs is in the strategy surrounding the resource management. You see, you might not want to finish the level right away. While there is a bonus for doing levels quickly, certain tiles give special things regardless of where or when they are matched. These are the tomatoes and brick tiles, which give food and materials, respectively.
These are the other two resources, other than gold, that you need to build the different structures. If you want to save time and not do a lot of stages in a row, you might consider lingering in a given level to match all the tomatoes, for example. There is a benefit for making the buildings one at a time, since they unlock special bonuses. For example, once you unlock the mine pick power up by making the mine building, if you complete a small challenge while playing normal Match 3 levels, the meter for said power up will permanently decrease.
There are plenty of these power ups, and they have their own representative tiles, therefore you can only use them if you match enough of their icons. As you unlock more power ups, the strategic decisions from the moment to moment gameplay get more complicated.
The goal of the game is to praise Ra by building a city in his honor. To do this, you need the required resources detailed on each building; at first it will only be gold, but a few more will be added. You collect these on the Match 3 mode of the game.
Once you have enough resources, you still need to play a small minigame in order to begin construction. These are actually really good auditions to the game, since they are all thematically tied to the building being made, and are quite varied between them. The art in them is also quite charming, while keeping with the solemn tone of the game. They are skippable, however, since the main gameplay is Match 3 and it is advertised as such.
Once the building is ready to be made, you can see your little workers going at it in a small dust cloud, where we can see the different stages of construction quickly pass by as within seconds, we have our requested edifice made.
Cradle of Egypt is in its exterior another Match 3 game, but has its own level of depth and the setting is original enough that makes this game a must try!
If you enjoy these free games, you will love this list of our 10 Best Match 3 Games!
