Jewels Connect

Jewels Connect is the plainest kind of gem board, and the brief from BestGamesFreePlay is short enough to leave nothing ambiguous: every jewel on the grid has a twin, you find the pairs by tapping them, and you do it inside a certain amount of time. A longer explanation of the rule sits in the rules written for a first game.

That makes it a game about looking rather than planning. The clock is the only opponent here, so the useful habit is a steady sweep of the grid instead of a hunt for one particular gem. Boards of this kind usually reward taking whatever pair your eye lands on first, since the seconds spent looking for a tidier move are the seconds you do not get back. The Happy Farm The Crop layout is catalogued beside this board.

The build is a squat 800 by 450 rectangle, wider than it is tall, which puts the whole grid in one glance. Tapping is the input it was written around, so a touchscreen suits it as well as a mouse does. A neighbour from the same shelf is the Connect Majong Class layout.

1. Start the round and let the timer begin.
2. Look over the grid for two jewels that show the same colour and shape.
3. Tap the first, then its match, and the pair is removed.
4. Keep pairing until every jewel is gone or the clock reaches zero.

• Sweep, do not hunt — in Jewels Connect the clock punishes searching for one particular gem while three easier pairs sit on screen.
• Work one band at a time — the 800 by 450 grid is wide and shallow, so reading it in horizontal bands keeps your eye from doubling back.
• Trust the first match — the pair you noticed straight away is almost always the cheapest one to take.
• Treat a first run as reconnaissance — a round is short, so an early attempt is better spent learning the gem set than chasing a score.