Jewel Quest - Xbox Live Arcade review

The concept behind the puzzle game  Jewel Quest is a basic one: arrange a grid of jewels of varying shapes and colors and into rows or columns of three or more. If you've played Bejeweled, the mechanics won't surprise you. What separates Jewel Quest is that you must make a row or column of jewels that intersects every square of the grid. No camping one spot here - you'll need to burst jewels all over the board in a limited amount of time (though not all at once).

Add to this the occasional missing square that limits access to the surrounding squares and you have the ingredients for a maddeningly frustrating time that also happens to be rather addictive. Still, the missing grid squares are about all the differentiation you can expect in gameplay as Jewel Quest doesn't feature any variety of modes - it's just the straight game with no bells or whistles.