What is a match 3 game?
By definition, a match 3 game is a puzzle game where you move or change pieces on a board so that three or more of the same kind would form a group. When they do, tiles disappear and the player gets one step closer to winning the level. A lot of casual puzzle games that we know and love are the match 3 games. Just to be extra clear, match 3 is a type of puzzle game. And some time ago we wrote a more general post about what a puzzle game is.
And we do have a match 3 game ourselves at YesPuzzles. You probably already know it - it is a hex puzzle called Clean!. At first glance it doesn’t look like the classic match 3 game. So in this post I wanted to think about what a match 3 game is and understand myself - whether our hexagonal match 3 version fits into this definition.
What is a match 3 game?
In a classic match 3 game you have a board with a square or rectangular grid full of colored pieces. It can be gems, candies, fruits or just tiles filled in with different colors. You swap two pieces that are next to each other and if this swap creates a row or a column of three or more identical pieces, they disappear. Then the pieces fall down from above to fill the empty space and so on. Sometimes the falling pieces make new matches by themselves and this is the most satisfying part of the game for me, because you get points for free. This is a classic variation of the game.
So if I have to say it in one sentence: a match 3 game is a matching puzzle where the main goal is to make groups of three or more identical pieces so they disappear from the board.
There is a big family of games called “match games” where pieces are removed from the board by matching. They are not limited to only three elements. Match 3 is the most popular member of this family, but there are also games where the player needs to match pairs of elements or to match 4 elements. Our new game - Halloween Match is the example of “match two” games. The player needs to match two identical elements next to each other in the funnel neck for them to pop.
What always confuses me is that one game can actually belong to two or more different groups. For example, if you take Hex Sense, it is a minesweeper logic game, but it is also a hex puzzle game and also a progression game.
Is Clean! a match 3 game?
Yes, it is, but it is not a classic match-3 game. There are three main differences:
- In Clean!, you don’t swap the tiles. You just tap the tile and it will change its color. By changing color in a smart way, you will have a group of 3 matching tiles which will disappear.
- The tiles don’t need to be in one horizontal or vertical line. They just need to be connected. That’s the only requirement that is needed.
- The board behavior is also different from the classic game. In the classic game, the board is always full, because some new tiles are appearing in the place of the tiles that are gone. In Clean! hex puzzle, the main goal is to fully clear the board.
You can read all the rules in more detail in our post on how to play Clean!.
But the core gameplay of the Clean! game is the same as in any match 3 game: three of the same color meet and they are gone from the board.
Hex puzzle game and match 3 game combination
And of course, since Clean! is also a hex puzzle game, it adds its own specifics to it. On a hexagon board every tile has six neighbors. Which means that groups can form in six directions.
When we were deciding on which grid we would like to make Clean!, we didn’t think about any of that. We just really like the hexagon shape and now three of our games are hex puzzles. And of course, the hex grid puts its own differences in puzzles compared to the square grid games. In hex minesweeper a number of adjacent tiles can never be higher than six while in the classic Minesweeper it can go up to eight. This also applies to the Hex Sense, our other hex minesweeper game with a story behind the game.
So, the same hexagon grid gives us three very different puzzles: Clean! - the one about colors, Hex Minesweeper - the one about pure logic and Hex Sense - the one about logic with an adventure added to it.
If you want to see how the classic match 3 idea feels on a hexagon board, give Clean! a try. It is free, there is nothing to install and it runs right in your browser.
Or try our Hexagonal Minesweeper based games:
And tell us in our Discord - do you think Clean! counts as a match 3 game, or should hex puzzles like it have their own name?
Written by
Ana