7 Wonders 2 HD takes you to seven locations around the world (well, seven and one secret location), as you help workers build some of the world's biggest and most extraordinary monuments. While the first game actually touched on the traditional Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this game takes players through a new batch of locations that are just as awe-inspiring, though I must confess that I hadn't heard of a couple of these before this game.
For the most part, 7 Wonders 2 HD doesn't change the core formula too much from the original. Players swap tiles in order to line up three or more like colored/shaped pieces. Doing so clears places on the board, and in general, once all of the locations have been cleared, you can move on to the next level.
The goal of each location is to collect enough building blocks to put together the wonder at that location. You earn building blocks a couple of ways. You can either match as many of an indicated type of tile, or you can cause specific types of blocks, usually corner stones or keystones to get to the bottom of the board and fall to the ground for your workers to pick up and use. Once you've cleared the board, you are taken to the wonder's screen and allowed to place your pieces on the construction site however you please. Sometimes, you will uncover powers ups that will affect your next game, and these include everything from faster workers to point bonuses to unlimited time.
Of course, you have your own power ups that you can unlock and use in the game. These will do everything from blow up every tile of a selected type to blow up all in a 3x3 grid or even create lighting that will destroy a large number of tiles. I personally found the power up that clears a full column to be especially handy in the later levels that had some of the more complex board designs.
7 Wonders 2 HD has you build Stonehenge, The Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, The Great Wall of China, The Moai Statues of Rapa-Nui, The Shwedagon Pagoda and the Angkor Wat of Cambodia, but that isn't all. Each location level has a color-coded location. If you match up the right tiles in that location, you are sent to a puzzle board where you must try to cause a piece of a map (or a star if you've already done the required pieces of maps for a location) to drop to the bottom of the screen. The catch is, you have a specific number of moves to do it in. As you collect these maps, a map of South America unfolds to reveal an eighth wonder to tackle. This would be Machu Picchu in Peru.
You might think that it is a bit hard to switch gears when the game pulls you into a more critical-thinking puzzle type of board while you are in the middle of the game's typical gameplay, but I often found these to be nice breaks from the time-crunch and pressure-filled typical levels. It really helped to break up the gameplay and keep it refreshing.
