Match-3 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPhone App: 10000000 is a great, complex game with a strange name

by Mike Schramm (Jul 27th, 2012)

Some games pare down a core idea to something really simple and elegant, cutting everything else away until one main bit of gameplay shines through. Canabalt is probably the perfect example of that recently -- it's just one core mechanic, done very, very well. But other games go the other ...

TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Matchlings

by Mike Schramm (Aug 1st, 2011)

Ah, match-3. It's now a tried and true form, and if you're like me, just the idea of matching three gems, shapes, or what have you is enough to keep you interested in a game. Enter Villian's Matchlings, a match-3 game where you're matching actual characters, of all things. The gimmick here is ...

TUAW's Daily App: Rise of Atlantis HD

by Mike Schramm (Dec 3rd, 2010)

I really enjoyed (and still occasionally play) Russian developer Playrix's Call of Atlantis on the iPhone. It's a pretty straightforward match-3 game that nevertheless has a lot of appeal. Somehow, the pieces (including some weird-shaped boards), certain items that you need to release from the grid ...

TUAW's Daily App: Tripolar

by Mike Schramm (Oct 13th, 2010)

Tripolar makes a big point of saying that it's not a match-3 game, and though the grid looks similar to that matching genre, it's really not. But it is a puzzle game. The idea is that you have pieces coming in on top of the board, and touching anywhere on the grid will insert that piece and delete ...

TUAW's Daily App: The Screetch

by Mike Schramm (Jul 30th, 2010)

The Screetch is a great game with a funny name. At its heart, it's a match three game; you want to match three of a kind for a certain round gem while you're constantly dropping them from above (Tetris style). The game's namesake is where things get slimy, though. The Screetch is constantly ...

TUAW's Daily App: Shifters

by Mike Schramm (Jun 11th, 2010)

Shifters is a fun little match-3 game with a "twist" -- instead of switching colored blocks to match three of a kind, you rotate them in sets of four. That changes up the strategy a bit, as the patterns look a little different from the standard Bejeweled-type game (the shifting mechanic is obviously ...

TUAW's Daily App: Call of Atlantis

by Mike Schramm (May 24th, 2010)

I am really looking forward to Puzzle Quest 2, since I was such a fan of the first game on XBLA. But until that comes out, Call of Atlantis is a polished gem-matcher that combines match-3 gameplay with a little bit of story and adventure. I believe it started out as a PC game, but you wouldn't be ...

TUAW's Daily App: Uprising

by Mike Schramm (May 17th, 2010)

Match-3 games are pretty easy to come by, so presentation is the really the qualifier -- does it do something a little more interesting than the average block-matcher? On that level, Uprising succeeds. While the core gameplay is pretty common (you pull blocks around a board, trying to match them ...

THQ Wireless releases Chop Sushi to the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Jan 26th, 2009)

Chop Sushi is a brand new game from our friends at THQ in the App Store that combines a love of the Japanese raw fish dish with an interesting twist on the kind of gem-matching battle gameplay that Puzzle Quest made famous (and addictive) a few years ago. It's still a matching game, except you're ...