Jewel Hunter

About this page. The game running here is Magic Stone Jewels Match 3 by WillingGames.com, served through GameDistribution, in place of the game this page used to load from an outside portal.

The scoring here is a side effect. What each level actually asks is that you break the dirty cells, and you break them by clearing jewels standing on top of them — make a column or row of three or more stone jewels of one type and the floor underneath gives way.

Two complications keep that from being routine. Locked jewels cannot be swapped at all, so part of every board is furniture you have to work around rather than material you can use. And the clock runs, which means a board read slowly is a board lost even when every move was correct.

The compensation is a set of special symbols — bomb, crump, flash and time — earned by clearing particular shapes rather than merely long lines, which is what makes shape recognition worth more here than raw speed.

1. Find the dirty cells first: they are what the level is scored against.
2. Clear three or more jewels of one type directly above a dirty cell to break it.
3. Note the locked jewels early and plan around them — they will not move.
4. Aim for the shapes that award bomb, crump, flash and time symbols when a corner is running late.

Chase the floor, not the score. A clean line in an already-clear corner is worth nothing to the level goal, while a scruffy three-in-a-row over dirty cells advances it — and the time symbol is the one bonus worth going out of your way for.