Recently I spent just under 2 weeks away from the internet, reading books and playing a LOT of PopCap’s Bejewelled on my iPad. Originally I had installed Bejewelled for my mother (as we were visiting my parents) and found that I continued to greatly enjoy the game myself. Shortly before our trip ended I decided I’d have another go at making an engine for a Match 3 style game, specifically trying to replicate the game play in Bejewelled. With a clear goal in mind, and a well executed example to follow I thought this could be a great opportunity to learn from how PopCap had made such a wonderfully addictive game.
Here’s a video showing how my game engine is shaping up, I allow any moves at the moment, this is very beta …
I’ve made a match 3 game before (Galaxy Gems), but I’d kept it simple and avoided some of the more complex gem matching that especially happens in Bejewelled with the ‘L’ shape, ‘T’ shapes. This time though i wanted to tackled this seemingly simple, but in practice complex logic problems. Over a period of 2 or 3 days I made great progress and had managed to get what about half way through a basic engine build.
My sketchbook is from India, with handmade paper – very cheap and has lots of plant matter embedded. Here’s my working sketches …
Here’s some photos from my sketchbook where I have been breaking apart the gameplay and working out solutions. I’ve found this extremely challenging and satisfying as it begins to work, turns out there’s A LOT of factors to take into consideration when making an engine of this type 
I won’t go into the details of how a game engine like this works, I simply don’t have the time myself to share this type of thing and besides I’m not finished yet so it’s quite likely I’ll have to change some things around as I implement more features. While making my version I had to make large changes to the structure and flow of the logic a few times.
I also spent a little time looking at the way PopCap had organised menus and screens, taking notes. Just to clarify, this is not so that I can blatantly copy, but instead in an effort to learn from what I find a well designed game. Here’s a few pages I did during this …
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