TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Matchlings

Ah, match-3. It's now a tried and true form, and if you're like me, just the idea of matching three gems, shapes, or what have you is enough to keep you interested in a game. Enter Villian's Matchlings, a match-3 game where you're matching actual characters, of all things. The gimmick here is that (much like Snood, actually), the characters are alive even as you match them, which means that they'll not only make faces and react to you as you play, but you can also double-tap them for various special abilities and power-ups.

There's nothing super new here -- it's match-3 through and through, and it'd be even nice if Villian, a company that really went out on a limb with their first game, the FPS for iOS Archetype, tried something a little different or new with this one. But you can't really go wrong with match-3, and that was probably their thinking with this one.

If you want something original, you'll have to look elsewhere. But if you just can't get enough of match-3 (a genre that seems perfectly made for iOS and this platform), Matchlings is available on the iPhone for US 99 cents.