Ruya is a beautiful, touching matching game which has you trying to connect different colored characters so that they can bring happiness to their matching characters on the screen. You play as Ruya, a mother who has lost her love and gone into a very depressive state, meditating as a way to get back to how she was.
She has grown giant antlers, which will be filled with flowers as you play, that have caused her to lose her memories. You will be helping her meditate through various seasons, bringing attention and joy to her children as you go. It looks like this is done through match-3 style gameplay, but Ruya is so much more than that.
In each level, you can place out different faces of each color, if your character is holding that face. They will appear in the row you pick, at the open slot at the bottom most part. Next to your character, there is a little bubble that shows what you are looking for. It might be to connect two of the same faces or more, in a specific shape. This shape or line can be rotated to be verticle or horizontal, but still needs to all be made of the same shapes.
Below the playing field in Ruya, there are the different children who want a set number of their faces to be collected. You will need to make them all happy to end the level – but there is also a move counter. Placing new faces do not count as moves, but connecting them up do. You can gain more moves by connecting faces that are in bubbles, but you will pop the bubble getting a move instead of getting their face. If you end up running out of space to place the faces and have no way to complete the design required, you will also lose a move but everything on the board will shuffle.
Ruya is a relaxing puzzle game that does get more challenging the further you get into the world. Each level feels bite sized and easy to discover within a small amount of time. The challenge increases slowly, getting you use to each of the different aspects of the level. There are various small stories, all done through pictures, about the main character and her life. These little aspects to Ruya make it a stand out game, and one I have been following for quite some time.
You can now get Ruya on Xbox, Mobile and PC.