Laruaville 8

This Laruaville installment is all right, but there are a few things which could've been better. There are 100 M3-puzzle levels, the vast majority of which can be solved with moves only. A good portion of each level is inaccessible, where you must solve the puzzle up to the point that the rest of the level plays itself. To me that was taking away some of the "puzzle" element which Laruaville 7 did really well. Also, with the usable playing area being smaller, it actually makes playing with matches only more difficult because it's so easy to be making powerups by accident which then get in the way. If you enjoy constantly using powerups, that's fun, but for me that makes the game childishly easy.

There is plenty of other content with a wide variety of minigames appearing in between every 3 or so levels (hidden object scenes, spot the differences, mahjong, and solitaire), plus bonus M3 levels which gradually unlock as you're going along. The bonus M3 levels are 20 turn-based levels where you play against a computer opponent trying to collect all the coins from your half of the playfield first. There are also 20 extra difficult bonus M3 levels either featuring black coins which will cause a forfeit if you collect any of the black coins, or tricky setups for the regular coins where doing things in the wrong order will make the level impossible to complete. There are better safety measures incorporated into the black coin levels this time so it's far less likely to accidentally lose due to a cascade (but you can still unintentionally remove the protections if you're not paying attention).

The story this time is pretty stupid, sorry. And I've got to wonder why it is that Laruaville started with 5 ghosts in the first game, but they've been slowly disappearing as the series has progressed. There are now just 2 ghosts left, and the sorcerer ghost this time makes me long for the wizard ghost who was in several of the earlier games. The town scene is a weird fusion of ideas taken from the Spellarium series: now cartoonish cute per the Laruaville tradition, but doesn't quite work IMO.

Not bad for all the content you get if you can overlook the "playing only half the levels" and the ghosts making themselves look bad.