Comments on: 'Gemmed!' Revives My Faith in Match-3

By: $0.99 Madness: Underworlds, Kroll, Creeps and Gemmed | I Love iPhone

$0.99 Madness: Underworlds, Kroll, Creeps and Gemmed | I Love iPhone — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:00:17 +0000

[...] ($0.99) – One of our favorite Match 3 games has seen a number of updates since we reviewed it back in January. The game now includes Classic, [...]

By: MuN

MuN — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:50:23 +0000

@glen The colors on each level are all random – next time you play, level 25 will have totally new gem colors. Sorry you are having issues with the colors – our next update will accommodate color-blind people.

Monsters eat gems towards their exits. When a monster is 1 cell close to its exit, he will eat +1 cell around the exit – so that he is not stuck right next to the exit.

By: Maxwell

Maxwell — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:45:59 +0000

I'm glad Jari mentioned Gem Spinner. I find it so much more interesting than Bejewelled and all its theme-veneered variations. Gemmed looks interesting with some new game play also I'll try out the free version. But for anyone who hasn't tried Gem Spinner I highly recommend it. Many many fun levels and it has a good free version too.

By: Glen Raphael

Glen Raphael — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:59:51 +0000

Level 25 has the same issue as level 20. The colors I can easily distinguish on that screen are: pink, light blue, yellow, red. The other two I'm having trouble distinguishing but I think they are supposed to be dark green and brown.

Monsters won't eat gems that move them *directly* away from their exit but they will eat gems that move them orthogonally away a bit. If there's an exit on the right side at row#4, they are attracted to the right side and positions on the screen that are at row 4 plus-or-minus one.

By: Glen Raphael

Glen Raphael — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:06:09 +0000

the rule is monsters will eat the same colored gem if it will advance them towards their exit. so, a monster won’t move away from their exit.

oooooooohhhhhhhh!

I totally did not realize the monsters were trying to get toward their exit to that degree. I assumed it would be part of the game that if I put same-colored gems on the wrong side of a monster, he'd move away from the goal. That is, that the monster's primary goal was to eat, not to escape. The combination of "monsters eat gems" and "monsters start getting bored/sleepy if it's been a while since they ate gems" implied that to me. So I found it confusing that even pure random bejeweled-style play seemed to help the monsters escape. I suspect K had the same confusion, leading to the comment above that "the game seems to play itself".

Given that info, I'm much less confused about gameplay. (though still a little, since I don't think your rule fully specifies what actually happens. If the monster is within a column or two of an exit on the bottom it's willing to eat gems in either direction, sometimes moving further away from the goal)

It might help if the how-to-play screens could be accessed from the pause menu. It's kind of subtle where you've got it now. Yeah, the game tells people stuff as the game progresses, but they might only realize later that they're confused. Incidentally, level 20 was one of the more difficult ones for the color choices. There were two gem types that seemed kind of brownish in color – I think one has more red in it but I'm not sure.

Oh, and one truly minor not: the "2" in your font looks a lot like a "1".

By: arn

arn — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:18:26 +0000

@glen the rule is monsters will eat the same colored gem if it will advance them towards their exit. so, a monster won't move away from their exit.

the problems you had were probably due to color mismatches.

the dev has said that the next version will have a color-blind mode.

By: Glen Raphael

Glen Raphael — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:13:54 +0000

I bought Gemmed based on the review and played through 22 levels, but found it frustrating. I'm red-green colorblind, so the biggest problem is that on many levels there are colors I can't easily distinguish. It's especially hard to tell which *exit* is associated with which colored critter, but it's also a problem when there are two colored gem types on the board that can't be distinguished – it's tedious to find which match through trial and error (Bejeweled fixed this partly with good palette selections but also by varying *shape* in addition to color). I also found it hard to figure out what rules governed when monsters would or wouldn't eat neighboring gems of the (apparently) same color, and wasn't sure if this was due to color mismatches or some subtlety in the rules. In short, this game seems like an interesting idea but not really successful yet.

By: K

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:25:16 +0000

Bejeweled has a high replayability for me. I can still only get to level 8 or 9 and its always such a frustrating fun experience.
Playing gemmed feels almost like the game is playing itself and im not sure i understand the monster movement completely. maybe i havent given this game enough time but 5 minutes with it and i was bored.
It might peak my interest after updates, but Im getting more and more picky about what games i buy and these lite versions usually make the decision for me…

By: Jari

Jari — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:54:18 +0000

I love match-3 games. I bought Gemmed and I love it. I must say that I find Bejeweled pretty but slightly boring. There's not much happening in bejeweled exept for swapping stones… I think match-3 games should have a bit more challenge and this one has. I have no problem with the graphichs, which some others above have commented. I have many matc-3's in my ipod and my favourites are Gemmed, Gem Spinner, Smiles and Aqualution (which isn't exactly matc-3 as such but same genre anyhow)

By: MuN

MuN — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 06:59:05 +0000

Thank you for your feedback. We respect everybody's opinion! Hopefully an update in the future will change your mind