---
title: "Caine Nielsen • Jewels | Caine's home base"
canonical_url: "https://cainenielsen.com/projects/jewels"
last_updated: "2026-09-03T17:17:22.818Z"
meta:
  author: "Caine Nielsen"
  description: Jewels
  "og:description": Jewels
  "og:title": "Caine Nielsen • Jewels"
  "twitter:description": Jewels
  "twitter:title": "Caine Nielsen • Jewels"
---

# Jewels

Caine Nielsen · August 15, 2026

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. 💖