What do you get when you combine the "match three" mechanic of Bejeweled with the forging of Minecraft under the loose guise of a city sim? This hodgepodge of ideas comes together in Triple Town, a puzzle game/sim about combining environmental objects to build a village.

The conceit is that matching three of the same type of terrain will form a more valuable piece of land, upping the worth of your town and freeing up real estate. Match three plots of grass to create a bush; three bushes combine into a tree, three trees into a house, and so on and so forth. Occasionally, you'll have to let bears loose into your borough, which must be cornered until they have nowhere to go -- at which point they become graves (with three graves turning into a church).

Which items you can place are randomized, making Triple Town similar to Tetris in that you'll often have a good setup, but desperately need a final piece to complete the set. Though unlike Tetris, you have one spot where you can save a particularly useful item for later.

There is a store where one can buy necessary items, but herein lies Triple Town's biggest problem -- you accumulate gold very slowly unless you buy it via in-app purchases. Gold is rarely doled out in-game, and mostly allotted at the end of each rather lengthy round. This makes the high-score chase especially unfair, since your options are severely limited based on the amount of gold you have entering a game. While there is a limit to the advantages you can buy for yourself, having to grind through long play sessions to earn resources necessary to set a record feels disingenuous.

The bottom line. It's a shame that Triple Town feels unnecessarily cruel and luck-based without in-app purchases, with high-scores set primarily through one's wallet, rather than skill. Still, the moment-to-moment action of shaping your hamlet remains engaging.