Level goals, butterflies and awkward board shapes
Levels here are not endless: each one sets a goal and gives you a fixed number of moves to reach it. That single design decision changes everything about how the board should be read, and it is where most habits carried over from timed match-3 games go wrong.
Two ways a level ends
The obvious one is running out of moves. The less obvious one matters more:
- Moves reach zero before the goal is met.
- A butterfly escapes the top of the board. On butterfly levels this ends the run immediately, however many moves you still hold.
Butterflies drift upward as the board resolves, so they are a timer disguised as an objective. On any level containing them, they outrank everything else on your list.
Board shapes are not rectangles
Boards vary in shape and size, stay under ten squares across, and — unusually for the genre — can contain gaps inside the playing field. Gems cannot be moved into empty space, and they can fall diagonally into gaps that have space above them.
The practical consequence: refill direction is not always straight down. Before planning a chain, look at where the gaps are, because a clear next to one will feed gems in from an angle you did not expect.
The colour count rises during a level
A level starts with a limited number of gem colours and introduces more as it progresses, up to all seven. This is why levels feel comfortable for the first few moves and then abruptly stop producing matches: the same board with seven colours is a far harder board than the same board with four.
Two adjustments follow. Do the work that needs long chains early, while the colour count is low. And do not read a late-level slowdown as bad luck — it is the design working as intended.
When no moves remain
If the board runs out of legal moves, the ordinary gems scramble; special gems stay where they are. That makes a stuck board less of a disaster than it looks, and it is another reason not to hoard specials: they survive the shuffle, so there is no need to spend one just to avoid losing it.
Goal types in short
- Rescue butterflies — clear matches beneath them to hold them down; treat every move as spent against a clock.
- Blast gravel or convert tiles to gold — location matters more than size. A modest match in the right square beats a large one in the wrong half of the board.
- Score thresholds — the one goal type where chains and specials are simply worth their score, and where the advice from our special gem reference applies most directly.
A short opening routine
- Read the goal and note which board region it lives in.
- Find the gaps, and work out where refills will come from.
- Check for butterflies before anything else.
- Spend the low-colour opening moves on the hardest corner, not the easiest one.