Jewels
Match-3 puzzle games are deceptively simple to describe and surprisingly fiddly to get feeling right — swap detection, cascade resolution, scoring, board refills that don't feel janky. Jewels is my take on the genre: a Bejeweled-style match-3 game, currently running locally in development at /games/jewels.
What it is
An 8×8 grid of gems — topaz, emerald, ruby, sapphire, and amethyst among them — rendered over a moody cave-like backdrop. Swap adjacent gems to line up three or more of the same type; matches clear, the board cascades, and new gems drop in to refill the gaps. A persistent HUD tracks current score against a running best score, so there's a reason to keep coming back to beat your own high score.
Where it stands
Still early — running locally, not yet deployed to the live site alongside Snake in the Games section. Once it's live I'll come back and fill in the technical details (board representation, match-detection approach, cascade/gravity logic) the way I did for the other game and project writeups.
Conclusion
Another small, self-contained game for the Games section — in the same spirit as Snake: no backend, no dependencies beyond the browser, just a tight core loop that's satisfying to poke at.
As always, thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. 💖