While you are playing the same type puzzles, there are several different modes to play. There is a story to the game that you can play and you will need to play through the story if you want to unlock more characters. Plus, it’s a great place to figure out how to play well. Each chapter has a large number of puzzles in it. The puzzles in the Story Mode are not timed and you can take as long as you want and you have as many tries as you want. If you do happen to clear it on the first try, you will get bonus XP. Story Mode goes in a linear path, but you can go back and play any previous level at any time. At the end of each chapter, you will have a head to head battle against the next character. Each chapter you are playing as a new character, which keeps things interesting. Their overall goal is to find the crown, but it’s neat how they keep switching to a new person.
When you want something a bit different, you can switch over to Arcade Mode. Here, you have the choice of Marathon, Heartbeat, or Infinipuzzle. In Marathon, you just keep playing until you lose. You are trying to raise the glass. To raise it, you have to clear every block below the glass, but it's harder than it sounds. When you match wrong, the blocks all lower. When they hit the ground, it is over. There is no time limit and the blocks only move down based on your moves. In Heartbeat, you are trying to keep going as long as you can as well, but this time the blocks move down on their own at a set speed. If you make a mismatch, they will also move down even more. Once again, keep going until they hit the bottom. Infinipuzzle will start out by asking you if you want to use modifiers. Be careful if you do because they can make it even more difficult! Infinipuzzle is like Story Mode in that if you make a mismatch, you die. You want to keep clearing puzzles as long as you can without messing up. The board will start moving down on you slowly, just to make it a bit harder.
When you get tired of playing alone, you can play Tumblestone with up to four players locally, online, or a combination of the two. I really like that you can choose to play two people locally and two more online (if you can find someone else online), because it gives you a bit more of a challenge. You can also set the bots to play against you. Fair warning, the bots can be really good depending on the difficulty level you set them to. Just a note, sadly I have yet to find anyone else online to play against. Tumblestone is a really fun multiplayer game so I hope there will be online opponents sometime!
From the Main Menu, you will also see that there are Quests and Extras. Quests are things that you will earn bonus XP if you do. Some will involve the Story Mode and some will be on the other modes. Once you complete one, you will get another. It seems like there are always four quests available (at least there are for me). In Extras, you can see your stats, check the online Leaderboards, and change up the game settings.
