Small Giant Games Styles Up 'Empires & Puzzles' with Rare, Epic, and Legendary Hero Costumes

Zynga subsidiary Small Giant Games kicked off the new year with a highly-anticipated Costume Chamber Event for its popular franchise, Empires & Puzzles.

Playing the Classic Match-3 In Style

In its new release, all of the remaining three, four, and five-star classic heroes in the game from the first season could be fitted with hero costumes. Running from Jan. 18 to 20, the limited-time event offered 25 brand-new designs, including the Terror of Windemer for Marjana (Legendary), Deathless Prince for Cyprian (Epic), and Wizard from the Sandsea for Jahangir (Rare). There are six Legendary costumes, ten Epic costumes, and nine Rare costumes in all. The full list of hero costumes is available on the Empires & Puzzles community forum.

"What better way to defeat the enemy than to do it in style?" said Small Giant Games managing director Jose Saarniniemi. With this update, players will have more options to customize heroes in battle, and these fresh designs each come with their own unique stats that grant exclusive abilities and increased powers to help players compete for glory."

Empires & Puzzles combine RPG elements, dungeon raids, and base building to create an entirely new take on the classic match-3 puzzle games. As players match three shields of the same insignia and color, corresponding heroes attack an enemy in the range - casting spells and building combos for more effective turns.

About Zynga and Small Giant Games

Zynga has established itself as a global leader in mobile gaming, achieving its "mission to connect the world through tames." It has a global player base of more than one billion, distributed among its various hit franchises such as the hyper-real drag racing game "CSR Racing," the match and evolve puzzle adventures "Merge Dragons" and :Merge Magic" and "Words With Friends."

Additionally, Zynga is also behind the social card game Zynga Poker, which was launched in 2007. In 2011, it posted a staggering 38 million player base, becoming the world's largest poker site. Starting as a Facebook app, it soon grew into ports for the Android, Windows Phone, iPhone, Windows, and Google+.

On the other hand, Small Giant Games was the Zynga subsidiary founded in 2013. The Helsinki, Finland game developers first broke through the mobile gaming market with "OddWings Escape," a fun sidescroller where gamers play as ducks flying through landscapes and avoiding obstacles while collecting hearts and coins. Their next release, Rope Racers, was also a success.

In March 2017, after Small Giant turned away from "casual games" and decided to "start looking for the big one," it developed and launched Empires & Puzzles - a game that mixed RPG elements with the match-3 puzzle genre - their largest and most successful game to date.

By December 2018, Zynga made the announcement that it will be acquiring the Finnish game developers, starting with an 80 percent purchase for 330 million USD and unregistered common stock valued at 230 million USD at the time of purchase.

Two years after its release in October 2019, Zynga and Small Giant reported a 500 million USD revenue for its entire lifetime as well as a total of 41 million downloads. This started the buy-off of the remaining 20%, with the first of three installments paid in May 2020.

Android users can download the game on Google Play Store and Apple users on the App Store.

Watch the Season III release video for Empires & Puzzles below:

This article is published on TechTimes