Overview: Treasure Madness is a very simple treasure hunting game. You are presented with a tile-based map, you click on a tile, and you find out what’s in it. Gold is a common result, which is used to unlock new maps and buy equipment to search different kinds of tiles. Fruit, which increases your health and allows you to play longer, is also common. Your health recovers at a steady rate – barring special events, it works out to uncovering a new tile every 15 minutes or so. Finding fruit and leveling up boost your health and let you play for longer at a stretch, but it’s really designed to be a check-in-every-few-hours sort of game.

Certain tiles will bring up one of a variety of minigames, including a memory game, a Bejeweled-type color matching game, and a Tetris clone. The minigames are reasonably well-done (except for the Tetris clone, which doesn’t really translate to the scaled difficulty system Treasure Madness uses) and the faster you win each game, the more skill points you get in it. Raising your skill level gives you access to a bonus game that gives you the health-bonus fruit. And the real treasures are only found on minigame tiles.

The treasures themselves are South American “archaological” finds, organized into sets. Completing a set gives you a bonus in gold and that sense of satisfaction of checking off another accomplishment, which is addictive enough in itself. You can set up a wish list of items you’re missing, and easily see and fill your friends’ wish lists too. The available free gifts include treasures as well as fruit, and special event maps and treasure sets are rotated in regularly.

Treasure Madness isn’t the prettiest game on the market, nor the deepest, but it’s a fun little way to satisfy that urge to make progress and get rewards. The minigames are engaging and there are tons of maps to explore and treasures to find. Definitely worth a look!

5/28/2010: Treasure Madness 2 Update Review