I’d like to thank HH-Games for the review key to this title.

Match-3 games all tend to have a singular problem. They are either too easy due to poor pacing, too hard due to poor mechanics, or some combination of the two. Finding one that strikes a fine balance is hard, but Halloween Trouble 2 attempts to do just that.

Like all Match-3 games, the premise is simple: match 3 or more tokens of varying types on a game board until you meet a certain quota to progress through levels. As is standard to games produced under the HH Games aegis, this one has a story to explain why you are doing this genre. In this game, the story is that a grandmother is planning to celebrate Halloween, but an actual witch decides to ruin things by damaging the house, forcing another witch to assist the grandmother. They manage to fix the damage to the house by manipulating a magic board (aka the Match-3 levels) that undoes all the damage, but since there is a lot of damage, it will take quite a few levels to fix.

Gameplay is pretty standard for a Match-3 game. Using the mouse, you select the token to match until you’ve cleared your board quota. This game has two other options with a cooldown attached; one will clear a token off the board of the player’s choosing, and the other will reshuffle the board. The latter is particularly useful to avoid running out of tokens one can feasibly move. Otherwise, gameplay is fairly straightforward.

Graphically, this isn’t as impressive as it could be. While the game tokens are nicely themed, the character paper doll art in the story scenes has this partially realistic style that isn’t all well drawn, but does the job of conveying the story. Thankfully, the sounds and music are a lot better, with a lot of spooky instrumental themes that are pretty catchy. My only real gripe is that a lot of the tunes lack proper looping, so some end rather abruptly.

Controls are nothing remarkable. Like most games made by this developer, it’s controlled primarily by the mouse, and it’s more than adequate. On the stability front, this game lacks issues running in full-screen mode on Windows 10 like some of their previous titles, which is a pleasant surprise. It can run on Linux more or less at native performance via Proton and should require no special configuration.

Morally, this title is generally fine but does have a few concerning items.

There is no violence, foul language, or sexual content. There are some mild supernatural elements, with implied witchcraft, but this is obviously not based on anything real and is generally a story device, but it’s pretty central to the story if that is a concern. Ethically speaking, you are trying to undo malicious damage to a woman’s house so she can celebrate a holiday with children, and that is not inherently objectionable.

Technically, it’s an above-average Match-3 title, some bad asset use aside. Morally, aside from the mild witchcraft references, it’s suitable for nigh any age group. Worth buying as part of a sale if possible and if this genre is of interest to you.