Finally, a cosy game that’s not afraid to kick my teeth in

You might want to break out your red flag collection before reading the premise of Mythmatch. It’s a cutesy, irreverent take on Greek mythology (uh oh), full of fetch quests (oh no), and its main hook is that you merge trios of objects together to create new ones. Y’know, just like in all those awful match-three puzzle games that have steadily eroded everything good about mobile gaming. Recommended!

No, seriously, highly recommended. Mythmatch has somehow taken three tired ideas and merged them into my new favorite cosy game. That’s because it’s something of a werewolf. By day it’s a cheerful affair where you hop around an island helping friendly villagers. Then at night it transforms into a brutal puzzler that absolutely despises me. I think I’m in love.

You play as Artemis, who’s currently applying to be the Goddess of the Hunt. She decides to prove her godly prowess with her new ability to magically merge objects together, and the objects she chooses to demonstrate this on are—yikes—three small dogs. Don’t worry, Artemis’ experiment thankfully just spawns a cuddlier take on Cerberus, rather than a remake of the dog scene from The Thing.

Team Artichoke knows you’re going to be spending 99.99999% of the game merging, so have prioritized making it feel fantastic. It’s the little touches that make it sing, like Artemis’ exaggerated hop between tiles and the straining face she pulls as she struggles to heave an object overhead. Then there’s a terrific flash of lightning as it all triumphantly merges together.

Sadly the bureaucracy of Olympus isn’t as impressed with Artemis’ merge power as I am. Her application to be a Goddess is denied by that snivelling worm Hermes, while her lazy brother Apollo has his promotion fast-tracked. Hermes then throws Artemis out of Olympus and into the mortal realm below. Will living amongst these mortals steadily ground Artemis and show her the, er, non-error of her ways? Yeah, probably!

Artemis spends her days taking requests from mortals, usually along the lines of ‘fetch me X so I can build Y’. What saves this from delivery boy tedium is the fun of figuring out the different combinations. Merge three olives and you get a cocktail stick with three olives on it. Merge three of those and you get a jug full of olive oil.

If you thought that chain of logic was a little rusty, oooh boy, strap in. This is a game where you make a bottle of milk by merging three plastic bottles together, with no involvement of a cow in any part of the process (tell your vegan friends!). Merge three bugs together and you get a raccoon. I’m no expert on racoon breeding, but I’m starting to suspect that Team Artichoke aren’t either.

I find these bizarre combinations charming and funny rather than annoying. You're only a dip into a menu screen away from finding out the right answers anyway, but I had much more fun smashing stuff together to see what ridiculous 90s-adventure-game-nonsense answer Mythmatch would throw at me next. Ah, but of course I build an action figure by throwing a raccoon at a garbage bag—in Ancient Greece—then merging the plastic arms the bags drop so they make a plastic leg.

Keep doing these odd jobs for everyone and they’ll steadily open up in conversations. These are very sweet and sincere, often funny, though sometimes a little too ‘ho ho ho we’ve put modern slang where it doesn’t belong lol!’ for my tastes.

Occasionally while merging items a stuffed bear will also drop. Give that to one of the townsfolk and you’ll enjoy a hug with them. Awww! You’d have to have a heart of ice to not find that cute.

Hang on, I absolutely do have a heart of ice, and this is usually the point in the cosy game where I’d run away screaming from such a saccharine lovefest. Luckily whenever things do start getting too twee, night falls and Mythmatch drops the cosy facade completely.

Artemis can ascend to Olympus nightly to prove she’s got the Godly goods in several minigames. The first is a simple match-three affair that quickly escalates into a nightmare. Merge three lumps of mud to make grass, three grass equals a goat, three goats a snake, etc. But you’ve got limited space to work with and the animals keep spawning more grass and mud, rapidly boxing you in. The animals also keep moving around the grid while you’re trying to merge them, the gits. Where’s a goat-sacrificing minigame when you need one?

By the time you’re spawning Medusas, who keep turning things you’re trying to move into stone, you’ll be overwhelmed and screaming at it, the cosiness of the hug you enjoyed mere moments ago a distant memory. Whenever I mess up for the umpteenth time and have to watch Medusa petrify my hopes of besting my high score, I naturally spit blood and consider starting smoking again.

But before I get the chance I’m booted back to the mortal realm, where I’m now far more in the mood for some cosiness. Nothing helps the ol’ blood pressure like successfully merging a pig and then hopping around with it in my arms to track down wishbones. Mythmatch is such a great mix of stress-stress-STRESS and chill gameplay that I’m genuinely going to end this sentence by comparing it to Resident Evil Requiem while almost keeping a straight face.

Flaws? Well whoever thought it was a good idea to include actual baby talk audio in some of the child conversation scenes owes my laptop a new mute key. I kinda like its anti-capitalist message, where the minigames are framed as futile stressful jobs where you’ll never be good enough, whereas the mortal stuff is all about teamwork and friendship and blahdy blah blah. Still, it’s a lot easier to break the loop of being exploited by late-stage capitalism when I can magically merge together whatever resources I need without whipping out my wallet, no?

Oh shut up, me. Nitpicks like that are easy to overlook when I can simply wait for night to fall and indulge in Mythmatch’s brutal side. The second minigame, wherein you’re working in Hephaestus' forge in what’s essentially single-player Overcooked, makes that first minigame look as relaxing as petting a kitten by comparison. You can unlock two animatronic fox helpers in that one, and I’m not proud to admit that I’ve called the semi-useless berks many words that would earn me a lifetime residency in Hades.

Let’s end on some nicer words then. Mythmatch is great and proves that you can be cosy while still offering a meaty challenge. It’s taken the foundations of many a soulless iPhone game and reminded me that such things don’t have to be a force for evil. If that’s not worthy of ascension to Olympus, what is?

Best of all, you can try it for yourself—it has a free demo available on Steam now.