Game Review: Unwell Mel

produced by Big Fish Games

Review by Troy Hepfner

"This is Mel. Mel... is not well."

So begins this wacky game about a doctor's worst nightmare: a patient like Mel. You see, Mel has every illness known to man, plus a few others that nobody has ever heard of before. He's not a hypochondriac; his ailments are real. I guess he just takes lousy care of himself. His arteries are clogged with gunk, his organs are filled with crud, and his body has more bugs than a Florida swamp. He also has some really weird deformities.

To treat Mel, you must clear away the gunk and bugs from his body. Each stage in the game corresponds to a specific disease, and each level corresponds to a particular organ or area of the body that must be treated. The game mechanic for doing this is a fairly standard match-3 mechanic. Now, you might be thinking, "Oh, no! Not another match-3!" But wait - don't make the mistake of lumping this game in with all those others. This game has a lot going for it, like some very lovable characters, a delightful jazz soundtrack, and wonderful humor - from the cartoon jokes on the calendar to the punny wit of diseases like Carpool Tunnel, Footen Mouth, Traumatic Wedgiosis, Eyephelia Pain, Tickle Me Elbow, and others. Also, this game was made by the same creative team that produced Fairway Solitaire, my all-time favorite casual game, so you know the quality in this game is going to be good.

In each level, your job is to clear away the green gunk on each space by making a match over that space. Some spaces are blocked by crusty crud that has to be broken up first. You do that by matching the item encased in the crud, or by blowing it up with a bug or power-up. In some levels, you must also match 3 or more bugs of the same type to remove the bugs from the board. There are different types of bugs, like Virusites that infect other bugs, Grabbits that stick to each other and clog up the board, and Hemogoblins that swell up and eventually burst (turning into hard crusty crud).

Fortunately, there are some useful power-ups that you can get. Power-ups come in two different varieties. The first variety are the power-ups you make when you match 4 or more items on the board. The game will award you with either multicolored peppermints (which serve as wild cards to help you make matches), super blue pills that blow up all of the items within a certain radius, or money that you can use to buy items from the traveling salesman. The items sold by the traveling salesman are the second variety of power-ups, and these are much more powerful. They include things like the bug zapper (which you see being used in the screenshot above), leeches that eat bugs, icy melts that freeze the board, and more.

The bottom line is that this is one delightful game. Give it a try, and experience the thrill of doing the impossible: curing the incurable Mel.

Unwell Mel is available for Mac and Windows.