Puzzles & Survival is a unique mobile game that combines match-3 puzzle mechanics with strategic base-building and survival elements. Set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies, players must solve match-3 puzzles to battle enemies, recruit heroes, and upgrade their shelters. In this beginners guide, we will be explaining all the core gameplay mechanics along with the building simulator added to expand your estate. The game also has a ton of unique heroes to collect and use with distinct abilities. Let’s check out everything!

Understand the Gameplay Mechanics of Puzzles & Survival

At its core, Puzzles & Survival is a puzzle-solving city builder that employs gacha mechanics at the same time. It mixes all of these genres seamlessly, giving players a lot of things to do as they start out in the game. As a beginner, your priority should first be given to constructing the basic resource buildings and completing the new player missions altogether. These missions are located on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, and they give the founding instructions for things you should be doing to progress farther into the storyline.

The combat mechanics of the game are completely different from the rest of the gameplay. These mechanics employ the puzzle solving match-3 mechanics seen in other popular games such as Candy Crush, etc. In this type of gameplay setting, you are destined to defeat hordes of enemies in a puzzle-solving environment. On the top of the board, you will be able to see enemies and their HP. On the bottom half, you should see your own puzzle that you can rearrange to match items of the same color and trigger combos and explosions.

When an explosion triggers where the enemy is standing, they get hit and damaged, resulting in loss of their HP. On the bottom-most part of the battle menu, you should be able to see your own heroes, represented by their portraits. Your heroes also have an HP bar and an energy bar. The former runs low when you are attacked and damaged by the enemies. The latter fills up as you match the same-colored objects as the color of the hero. Once the yellow energy bar is full, your heroes can unleash their ultimate abilities at the click of their portrait.

Buildings Explained with Examples

The building system of Puzzles & Survival is quite easy to learn and understand even for new players who have not played games like this before. Firstly, you need construction workers to help you construct and upgrade existing buildings. You can see the free ones on the top left-hand side of the screen. Next up, go to the Build section and choose any building that you want to construct or upgrade. All of these tasks take up some core resources such as Wood, Iron, and more. Ensure you have sufficient supplies to complete the task. There are multiple different types of buildings in the game, such as resource-oriented, profiteering buildings, and some to simply advance your settlement.

Check out some of the core buildings in Puzzles & Survival, along with their uses:

• Headquarters – This is the core building of your sanctuary. Upgrade it to unlock new buildings and raise building level limit.
• Watch Tower – Watch tower sends you a notification whenever your sanctuary or camps are under attack, recon, transport, or reinforcement.
• Warehouse – Warehouse protects your resources from being plundered. Upgrade it to protect more resources.
• Rider Camp – Rider units are trained here. Upgrade to unlock more advanced units.
• Shooter Camp – Shooter units are trained here. Upgrade to unlock more advanced units.
• Fighter Camp – Fighter units are trained here. Upgrade to unlock more advanced units.
• Farm – Build and upgrade farm to increase production and capacity of Food resources.
• Virology Lab – Build and upgrade virology lab to increase production and capacity of Antiserum resources.
• Lumber Mill – Build and upgrade lumber mill to increase production and capacity of Wood resources.

Heroes and Noah’s Tavern

Heroes make up the core bread and butter of your teams in combat scenarios. Players can recruit new heroes via events in the form of fragments, or via the Noah’s Tavern, an exclusive building dedicated to harness the gacha mechanics of the game. This building unlocks quite early on, and allows players to summon on different banners to get access to powerful heroes. The gacha system of Puzzles & Survival is straight-forward.

All heroes in the game are assigned a base rarity according to which their probabilities of summoning are decided. The higher the rarity of the hero, the lower the chances of summoning them. At the time of global launch, there exists 3 distinct summoning banners:

• Basic Recruit – In this summoning banner, players can summon 2-star to 3-star heroes at differing probabilities. All players get 5 free summons each day on this banner. Players can use their collected Basic recruit coin to summon either a single time or 10x times on the banner.
• Intermediate Recruit – In this summoning banner, players can summon 2-star to 4-star heroes at differing probabilities. Players can use their collected Intermediate recruit coin to summon either a single time or 10x times on the banner. A pity system also exists wherein players get exchangeable points for each time they summon on this banner. The points can be exchanged to get powerful heroes.
• Advanced Recruit – In this summoning banner, players can summon 3-star to 5-star heroes at differing probabilities. Players can use their collected Advanced recruit coin to summon either a single time or 10x times on the banner. A pity system also exists wherein players get exchangeable points for each time they summon on this banner. The points can be exchanged to get powerful heroes.

The Questing System Explained

Puzzles & Survival has a host of different types of quests available that players can partake in to complete and reap juicy resources. Majority of the quests are quite easy to complete and require some time to get to know the game mechanics. The game has 3 types of quests – Daily, Alliance, and Main quests. Daily quests are the bread and butter of free-to-play players as they are available each day and offer free resources after each reset. Alliance quests can only be completed once you’re a part of an Alliance. Main quests, on the other hand, are more long-term and players can take their sweet time to complete them in order to advance in the game narrative.

Players can enjoy playing Puzzles & Survival on a bigger screen of their PC or Laptop via BlueStacks along with your keyboard and mouse.