While there may have been earlier video games with tile-matching mechanics, Juul stated that the commercial success of both Tetris and Chain Shot! established the popularity of puzzle games, leading to a second generation of influential games – Puzznic, Columns, Dr.

While both are puzzle games, they differ in important design points such as time pressure, tile manipulation, and solving criteria. Video game researcher Jesper Juul traces the history of tile-matching video games back to early puzzle Tetris and Chain Shot! (later known as SameGame), published in 19, respectively. The mechanism of matching game pieces to make them disappear is a feature of many non-digital games, including Mahjong solitaire and Solitaire card games. Video game researcher Jesper Juul therefore considers tile matching to be a game mechanic, rather than a distinct genre of games. The tile matching mechanic is also a minor feature in some larger games. They include purely turn-based games but may also feature arcade-style action elements such as time pressure, shooting or hand-eye coordination. Tile-matching games cover a broad range of design elements, mechanics and gameplay experiences. They have remained popular since, with the game Candy Crush Saga becoming the most-played game on Facebook in 2013. Tile-matching games were made popular in the 2000s, in the form of casual games distributed or played over the Internet, notably the Bejeweled series of games. Their origins lie in puzzle games from the 1980s such as Tetris, Chain Shot! ( SameGame) and Puzznic. The core challenge of tile-matching games is the identification of patterns on a seemingly chaotic board. That number is often three, and these games are called match-three games. In many tile-matching games, that criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. The player selects a group of matching-color blocks to make them disappear from the grid, with unsupported blocks falling downwards.Ī tile-matching video game is a type of puzzle video game where the player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion.

Type of puzzle video game SameGame was released in 1985 and has since been ported to many platforms.

Game like match 3 jewels