Players need to make matches and when they do, parts of the game board behind those matches turns to gold. Iwin’s Jewel Quest (2004), expanded on Bejeweled’s Match 3 concept by incorporating a play mechanic used in PopCap’s Alchemy game. The game’s massive popularity and financial success helped kick off the Casual Games revolution online and spawned sequels and many copies. The game started out as a free online game but due to its popularity, PopCap polished it up and released it as a shareware download. Once rearranged, however, objects held their new position until cleared or moved again.īejeweled, created in 2001 by PopCap, is the longest standing in the modern incarnation of the Match 3 style. Tetris Attack for the Super NES allowed only horizontal and vertical connections, and objects could only be rearranged in connected, horizontal pairs. Objects could align vertically, horizontally or diagonally, and the third variant is what made Columns unique.

The player’s role was to cycle the objects as they fell and determine a landing point that would make a 3-or-greater series of objects likely.

Columns was a Tetris-style game, in which segments of three, vertical objects (generally different objects, though some sets could contain two or three of the same objects) would fall from the top of the screen downward. The idea behind match 3 games can be seen in games like Columns (1989) and Tetris Attack (1996). Chains can continue indefinitely, and the strategies of getting a board overpopulated with one type of object and clearing objects from the bottom of the screen are worthwhile in nearly every version. If falling objects create new chains of three or more identical objects, those new chains clear, become points for the player, and again are replaced. The space at the top of the screen that would now be empty is instead filled with fresh pieces. If a section of objects is cleared, the objects above take their place. However, even though the games are easy to learn, all Match 3 games incorporate strategy, which is one reason they have maintained popularity with casual gamers. The simple game concept works in Match 3’s favor. This means that a swap of two objects must result in a connection of three or more identical objects, or else the swap reverts itself. This rearrangement is done by exchanging the places of two tiles at a time, and, in recent variations, it is made more difficult by limiting the player to one move before “clearing” pieces. Match 3 is a generic style of video or computer game, in which the player attempts to rearrange shapes or objects in a playing field in order to get three or more identical objects connected (sometimes in a row, otherwise just sharing a side), at which point they disappear and grant the player points.

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