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Chapter 13: Same Game

You have a grid of coloured squares, which you have to clear by highlighting contiguous regions of more than one coloured square; the larger the region you highlight, the more points you get (and the faster you clear the arena).

If you clear the grid you win. If you end up with nothing but single squares (i.e., there are no more clickable regions left) you lose.

Removing a region causes the rest of the grid to shuffle up: blocks that are suspended will fall down (first), and then empty columns are filled from the right.

Same Game was contributed to this collection by James Harvey.

13.1 Same Game controls

This game can be played with either the keyboard or the mouse.

If you left-click an unselected region, it becomes selected (possibly clearing the current selection).

If you left-click the selected region, it will be removed (and the rest of the grid shuffled immediately).

If you right-click the selected region, it will be unselected.

The cursor keys move a cursor around the grid. Pressing the Space or Enter keys while the cursor is in an unselected region selects it; pressing Space or Enter again removes it as above.

(All the actions described in section 2.1 are also available.)

13.2 Same Game parameters

These parameters are available from the ‘Custom...’ option on the ‘Type’ menu.

Width, Height

Size of grid in squares.

No. of colours

Number of different colours used to fill the grid; the more colours, the fewer large regions of colour and thus the more difficult it is to successfully clear the grid.

Scoring system

Controls the precise mechanism used for scoring. With the default system, ‘(n-2)^2’, only regions of three squares or more will score any points at all. With the alternative ‘(n-1)^2’ system, regions of two squares score a point each, and larger regions score relatively more points.

Ensure solubility

If this option is ticked (the default state), generated grids will be guaranteed to have at least one solution.

If you turn it off, the game generator will not try to guarantee soluble grids; it will, however, still ensure that there are at least 2 squares of each colour on the grid at the start (since a grid with exactly one square of a given colour is definitely insoluble). Grids generated with this option disabled may contain more large areas of contiguous colour, leading to opportunities for higher scores; they can also take less time to generate.