The Hidden Message of Triple Town

For a long time, Triple Town has been my go-to game for when I'm sitting on the bog. It's a fun and interesting little puzzle game.

The idea is that you have to build a town. The board is divided into a grid, and each turn you can put down a randomly-determined piece. When you put down three of the same piece in connected squares, they combine into the next-higher piece.

Three grass combine into a bush. Three bushes combine into a tree. Three trees combine into a hut. Three huts combine into a house. Three houses combine into a mansion. Three mansions combine into a castle. Three castles combine into a floating castle. In theory, you can get four floating castles to combine, but I've never been able to do that. Each piece you get is randomly determined, but the lower-order pieces are much more common than the higher-order ones. I've never got a piece higher than a hut. You can also occasionally get crystals, which are wild cards that you can use to combine with any two other pieces. You can also get bots, which you can use to destroy a single piece.

There are a few complications. Mostly, bears. Bears wander randomly around the board, blocking where you can put useful things. They come up in your random selection of pieces - so you have to put a bear on the board when you get one. Bears can only wander on blank spaces, so you can cut them off into specific areas of the board if you want to, and it's actually a really good idea to do so. You can also get ninja bears, which are like bears but they can jump about to any square on the board - they are not constrained in their movements like bears are. The bears look (a little disturbingly) like Pedobear.

There is only one way that bears will ever go away. If you block three or more bears into an area so that none of them will move, then they will all combine into a church. Yes - if you gather enough pedobears into a single area, they will become a church. That's the first hidden message.

So you might be asking - what happens when you combine three churches? Well, obviously, they become a cathedral. And if you combine three cathedrals? Well, they become a chest full of coins that you can use to buy the specific pieces that you want instead of getting a random selection. Yes - if you combine churches, you get money. That's the other hidden message.