Matching Puzzle Mythmatch Gets A New Demo Instead Of Waiting On The Big Showcases
It’s a long way to the top.
Showcases like Summer Game Fest and Day of the Devs can be some of the best ways to introduce new players to a game, no matter its size. Selections at these shows tend to be featured on Steam’s front page, get widely shared online, and get a big boost from potential players adding them to wishlists. So what can a developer do to get noticed if they don’t make it into a showcase? When the upcoming Mythmatch was “rejected from all the summer showcases,” as developer Moo Yu shared on Bluesky, the answer was just to release a new demo anyway.
“It is emotionally draining to keep applying to showcases and to just get rejection after rejection,” Yu tells Inverse. “I think I've applied to at least ten already this year and gotten into zero of them. But on the other side, I do understand how competitive it is and that they are trying to find the best games to show off to their audience. So since I didn't get into any showcases, I just decided it'd be a good time to release the new demo during a relatively quiet period.”
The demo in question is a short slice from the beginning of Mythmatch, a game that casts players as Artemis, the daughter of Zeus, trying to earn the title of Goddess of the Hunt. That’s because in Mythmatch’s version of Greek mythology, the pantheon has an HR department and it’s not keen on letting anyone in just because their father is a deity. Except for Apollo, of course, who’s immediately granted the title of god, because even on Mount Olympus, women just have it harder in the workplace.
So Artemis returns to the mortal realm to convince its denizens to believe in her, which could help her ace the goddess interview. Mythmatch plays like a heavily modified version of the merge puzzles that are popular on mobile platforms. This genre involves dragging three matching items together (anything from plants to soldiers based on the game’s theme) to combine them into higher-tier items and rack up points. Where the typical versions of these games usually take place on small grids, Mythmatch turns it into a sprawling adventure across the Greek isles.
Artemis is trying to earn the respect of other gods through her unappreciated good deeds.
Using her bow, Artemis can snatch up items at a distance, then plop them down in front of her, trying to line them up with their matches to merge them. The trick is often finding the items in the first place. In the game’s demo, Selene, Goddess of the Moon, needs help repairing her chariot, which Artemis can do by combining drops of celestial power that rained from the sky. But doing so requires helping the nearby mortals with their probably, namely gathering enough sand to turn into glass, and using that to repair a gardener’s greenhouse. Artemis sometimes has to work with mortals who produce the items to solve a puzzle, and helping them out enough will lead them to level up and make items more efficiently.
On top of doing good deeds, Artemis needs to pass challenge stages in Olympus to get her promotion. These levels look much more like the merge puzzles you might be familiar with, but they’re much more difficult than their usual chill incarnation. Many of the items that Artemis has to merge are animals, which don’t like to stay put. Succeeding becomes a race to merge items produced by the animals, and the animals themselves, before they completely fill the screen and end your round.
Mythmatch’s version of ancient Greece is cute and cartoony.
Mythmatch’s adventurous spin on merge puzzles is a lot of fun, but it’s the demo’s charm that really won me over. Artemis’ struggles to prove her obvious worth while her do-nothing brother is celebrated, along with small touches from mythology like merging three dogs to form Cerberus or three wheels to make a chariot, are at least as much of a draw as the puzzles themselves.
Even a great demo won’t get as many eyes on a game as getting into a video games showcase would, and that’s not getting any easier.
“This year, I applied to every showcase that I saw and was eligible for and didn't get into any of them,” Yu says. “This isn't uncommon and I'm grateful that I got into one last year. There are just so many games competing for a handful of slots. I believe Wholesome Direct said they got over 1,000 applications this year.”
Mythmatch doesn’t yet have a release date — Yu says having one to announce at a showcase is one way to make a game more likely to get it — but for now, its demo is a preview of a charming puzzle game that’s worth checking out.
