Tile-matching video game
[4][5] Tile-matching games cover a broad range of design elements, mechanics and gameplay experiences.
They include purely turn-based games but may also feature arcade-style action elements such as time pressure, shooting or hand-eye coordination.
While both are puzzle games, they differ in important design points such as time pressure, tile manipulation, and solving criteria.
While there may have been earlier video games with tile-matching mechanics, Juul stated that the commercial success of both Tetris and Chain Shot!
Building on the shooting mechanic introduced in Plotting, Dr. Mario also influenced Puzzle Bobble (1994), which in turn inspired Puzz Loop (1998), Hexic and Zuma (2003), and Luxor (2005).
Several multiplayer modes, both local and networked, featured in early tile-matching games such as Columns and Dr. Mario and later with TetriNET (1997) and Tetris Worlds (2001).
The first of what eventually became known as "match-three" games, where the goal is to create clusters of three or more identical items on a grid, was Shariki (1994).
King, which had made similar tile-matching games for browser-based games, explored a different approach with its first mobile app, Bubble Witch Saga, which had puzzle-oriented gameplay like Puzzle Bobble, but applied finite restrictions on the number of moves the player could take and setting target goals such as score or clearing the board.
This enabled them to create numerous levels that could be completed in a short time, making the game ideal for mobile players, and apply a microtransaction model to provide players temporary boosts and power-ups for more difficult levels.
This approach proved highly successful and King reused it for the tile-matching game Candy Crush Saga in 2012, itself which was inspired by Bejeweled.
[15] Puzzle Quest was very popular and led to numerous games which uses the tile-matching as part of a battle system.
Juice Cubes, Tower of Saviors, Alien Hive, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Jelly Splash and Doctor Who: Legacy were released for mobile devices from 2013 onwards.
In 2015 Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle, Ironcast, HuniePop, Hex Frvr and Sailor Moon Drops were all released.
The genre continues to appeal to gamers, with numerous titles including Boost Beast (2017), Dr. Mario World, Crystal Crisis (2019), and Royal Match (2020) among the more recent.
While the merging mechanic had been part of other video games since as early as Darwin's Dilemma in 1990, the genre saw a boost following the success of Threes on mobile platforms.
Early puzzle games like Tetris were timed – that is, new tiles are continuously added and the player is under pressure to make matches before the board fills up.
In untimed modes, the player is able to continue to make matches until they reach an unplayable state, in which case the game is considered over.
[3] With the introduction of Candy Crush Saga, games with levels featuring limits on the number of moves were introduced.
In this, the player may be challenged to achieve a certain score, or match enough tiles of a specific color before running out of turns, or otherwise would have to complete the level again.
Higher scores are awarded for more difficult matches, such as those involving a greater number of similar tiles.
[21] But as they became well known and therefore assumed to be immediately playable by many people, tile-matching games migrated to other, more ubiquitous distribution channels such as cell phones and smartphones.
