Today, I'd like to talk about a video game that's been near and dear to my heart ever since I was a little kid: Bejeweled. It's a game that used to be really popular, but its downfall is kind of sad to look at in retrospect.
Bejeweled is a puzzle game created by Jason Kapalka, founder of PopCap Games, in 2001. The primary premise of the game, as the name would imply, is that you've got an 8x8 grid full of gems, and you can swap the positions of adjacent gems. A valid move is any move that would bring three or more gems of the same color into a straight vertical or horizontal line. When three or more gems of the same color are arranged like this, they will disappear, any gems above them will fall downward, and then new gems will fall in from the top of the grid to replace them. You can also earn extra points by having the falling gems fall into a position where they themselves form a straight line of three gems, which will then themselves disappear, causing the entire process to repeat itself. Each level has a progress bar, which, when filled, allows you to advance to the next level, typically with some very pretty, psychedelic looking animations.
The first game in the series is quite barebones, lacking any special gems at all, and only having two modes: Normal and Time Trial, which are exactly what their names imply: Normal is an untimed mode where you play until you run out of moves, while Time Trial is a mode where the progress bar starts at the halfway point and slowly depletes, ending the game if it ever becomes completely empty. Despite its lack of features, this game sets the tone for the rest of the series quite well, and the music is very good. Other than that, not much to say here.
Bejeweled 2 is one of those sequel games that's just straight-up better than the original game in every single conceivable way.
It adds two special gem types: the Power Gem (appears as a sparkling gem, which is formed by making either a straight line of 4 gems, or two matches of the same color that intersect each other, like an L or T shape), which explodes when matched, destroying all gems in the eight squares surrounding it and sending out a VERY satisfying-looking shower of gem fragments, and the Hyper Cube (appears as a spinning and morphing rainbow vortex, formed by making a straight line of 5 gems), which can be swapped with another gem to destroy all gems of the same color. For this game only, though, Hyper Cubes are fragile and, rather than being activated when a Power Gem blows up next to them, will simply poof out of existence, though you will get a point bonus for doing so.
Bejeweled 2 also improves on the game's mode selection, aesthetics, and soundtrack, featuring a whopping 9 modes, the most of any game in the series, four of which (Classic, Action, Puzzle and Endless) are unlocked from boot-up and five of which are secret modes that can only be unlocked when certain conditions are met; a very nice-looking outer-space aesthetic featuring a diverse selection of planetary backdrops (there was even a scrapped "Planet Pack", which would have added several more to the lineup), and a full soundtrack of electronic music, made by Peter "Skaven" Hajba, and featured as the background music for this page. (You can even put the game disc into a CD player to use it as a music disc!)
In addition to the standard Classic and Action modes featured in Bejeweled 1 (which are just renames of Normal and Time Trial, respectively), the other two main modes of the game are Puzzle Mode, which challenges players to clear the board of gems while no more will fall, and Endless Mode, which is exactly what it sounds like: you cannot lose at all. It also features a medallion (or "medalian", as the game's files refer to it) that fills with crystals each time you complete a level. (The medallion is actually a clue on how to unlock one of the secret modes, as well!) In my opinion, this and Bejeweled Twist were the peak of the series.
Bejeweled Twist is a very unique entry to the Bejeweled series. Instead of swapping pairs of two gems for each move, players twist groups of four gems to make matches. This is a very unique entry to the series and this will be by FAR the longest part of this page.
Due to the new mechanics of moving gems around, Hyper Cubes do not appear in this installment. Their function has instead been given to the Fruit Gem, a very rare special gem which resembles a fruit of its respective color; the pattern that once yielded a Hyper Cube now yields a new type of gem called a Lightning Gem, which shoots lightning outward in a cross when it is destroyed. (Power Gems, by the way, have been replaced with Flame Gems, which are functionally identical in every way.) There also exists another special gem: the Supernova Gem, which is the most powerful gem in the game. It is created by lining up six gems of the same color in a row (a feat that is impossible without the help of cascades, though the ability to make non-matching moves makes this easier), and when matched, it destroys all gems not only in its own row and column, but neighboring ones too.
Notably, this is the only game in the series where moves are allowed to not make a match. To incentivize making matches, though, a sort of carrot-and-stick system is used: the Chain Multiplier (pictured in the top left) is a way to score more points by making a lot of matches in a row, while the Doom Gem is a dangerous gem that appears randomly after level 13, which cannot be moved, cannot be matched (though special gems can still destroy it), and has a counter on it that ticks down every time you make a move that doesn't match. If the counter hits 0, the Doom Gem will explode and end your game. Additionally, since running out of moves is no longer a loss condition, Bomb Gems were added as an alternate loss condition; they'll fall on the board every so often starting on level 2 and tick down every time you make a move, whether the move is a match or not. If one of them hits 0, it will explode, though you do have one last chance to defuse the bomb with a roulette minigame. Other dangerous gems appear too, such as locked gems, which cannot be moved, and coal, which cannot be matched but can be cracked open with special gems for a point bonus.
Bejeweled Twist features four game modes: Classic, Zen, Challenge and Blitz. Classic and Zen are available from boot-up, while Challenge and Blitz must be unlocked over the course of the game. (Due to them being core game modes rather than just an easter egg, though, it's a lot easier to unlock these modes than Bejeweled 2, and the game outright tells you what you need to do.) Classic is... well, classic, Zen is the new name for Endless, which will be used again in Bejeweled 3, Challenge is a mission mode where the player visits 13 planets, each with their own mission theme. Each planet's challenges have seven levels, and if you complete them all, you unlock that planet's Eclipse challenge, which features a high-score mechanic, and lastly, Blitz is this game's timed mode. Instead of levels, though, Blitz mode gives you a flat 5-minute timer, saving is disabled, and bomb gems appear, but if the bombs reach 0 here, you just lose without a chance to defuse them. Also, Blitz has the BEST MUSIC EVER HOLY SHIT. It's quite telling that it's the one song they chose to be the trailer music.
The sheer amount of CONTENT this game packs in is actually only the tip of the iceberg, as well. Of all the Bejeweled games, this one features by FAR the most dummied-out elements: two power gems (the Ice Gem, which would have been made with five gems in an X shape, and would have frozen the timers on bombs for a short while, and the Angel Gem, which would have been made with five gems in a + shape, and would have destroyed every bomb on screen), a dangerous gem (the Skull Gem, which would have eaten its way down the board, ending the game if it ever reached the bottom), a lives system (Shards, which, inferring from dummied-out strings that mention them, would have been destroyed every time a Skull reached the bottom or a Bomb went off), a trophy room, a shop that would have featured things like game modes, gem skins and decorations, some sort of bonus-wheel minigame (not the kind that happens when you have to defuse a Bomb), and a fourteenth Challenge Mode planet (Locksmith, which would have focused on breaking locked gems), as well as some aesthetic changes, such as Doom Gems having a purple number on them (in the final game, their number starts out white but turns red once it starts ticking down). A full rundown of everything that was dummied out of Bejeweled Twist can be found on its TCRF page.
Bejeweled Blitz, aka "that game your grandma kept poking you about every single day". This game is a bit unique in that it came in two distinct ways to play: a browser-based version which was playable on Facebook, or a standalone version of the game which could sync to Facebook at one point, but was deprecated. The browser version started out with the same UI and aesthetics as Bejeweled 2, but was later on updated to have its own aesthetic, which would later go on to be used in the standalone version, as well as in Bejeweled 3. It was updated again some time later, but the update did not carry over to standalone Blitz, and the two fell out of parity with one another.
The premise of Bejeweled Blitz is that the rules of the game are the same as regular (read: not Twist) Bejeweled, but you only have one minute to play. The goal of the game is to earn as many points as possible. To facilitate this, Multiplier Gems will fall onto the board whenever you destroy at least 12 gems in a single move. If you match or destroy one of them, your multiplier will increase by 1. There are also Coin Gems, which are unique in that they are exclusive to being either a yellow gem (on the browser version) or a white gem (on the mobile version). You can collect the coin inside the gem by destroying it; this is how you buy Boosts. Additionally, Hyper Cubes make their triumphant return, with a new design and some new abilities. In Bejeweled 2, detonating a Power Gem near a Hyper Cube would destroy the Hyper Cube without any effect, but here, it sets the Hyper Cube off with the color of the gem that destroyed it. Also new to Blitz is the ability to destroy every gem on the board by swapping two Hyper Cubes. In Bejeweled 2, doing this would simply destroy all the Hyper Cubes on the board without any additional effect. Lightning Gems are still in the game, but they have been renamed to Star Gems, and they are now made by forming an L or T shape. (In previous games, this configuration of gems would instead create a Power Gem or Flame Gem.) Supernova Gems do not reappear in this game, however.
Boosts are Bejeweled Blitz's power-up system. Before the game starts, you can select a loadout of up to three Boosts. Originally, only five Boosts existed: Detonator (puts a special Detonator button on the board that lets you set off all of your special gems at once), Scrambler (puts a Scramble button on the board that can be used twice), Mystery Gem (you start the game with a random special gem), Multiplier (you start the game with a x2 Multiplier Gem on the board), and Extra Time (when the one minute runs out, you get an additional five seconds). Later on, more boosts were added, and the ability to upgrade them was also added. Somewhere along the line, they also added Rare Gems, which were originally just one-time-use powerups that would randomly present themselves to you before a game. You could spend a certain number of coins to mine the Rare Gem and gain its effects, but if you didn't do it THAT GAME, you'd lose the chance to do so. This was an interesting system at first, but sadly, power-creep began to set in, and later Rare Gems became pretty much homogeneous in their function: they'd almost invariably make one color act as super-Flame Gems, and give you a specific board setup that would utilize that color more often.
The main objective of Bejeweled Blitz is to get as many points as possible, but you also get medals for scoring above a certain point value (originally, this was every 25,000 points, but more recent increases to the cap have changed this; as of the time of this writing, the top five highest medals are for 10 million, 5 million, 3 million, 1 million and 500,000 points). The game keeps track of how many medals of each value you finish a game with, as well. The standalone version also adds achievements, a feature which would be continued in Bejeweled 3.
This game's aesthetics underwent several radical changes, including introducing the new aesthetic the series used in Bejeweled 3. Whereas 2 and Twist had a science-fiction aesthetic, Blitz changed the series to a more fantasy-oriented theme. The backgrounds in 2 and Twist were computer-generated using a piece of software called MojoWorld, but the ones from Blitz onward are hand-drawn. The most recent browser versions of Bejeweled Blitz also do away with Skaven as the primary composer, instead opting for remixes of the theme music he created for the standalone version.
This game was super popular in its early days, but as power-creep set in, interest started to wane. Personally, I think the shift from the sci-fi aesthetic to the fantasy one is the single event that marked the start of the downfall of the Bejeweled franchise, but that's just my opinion.
The year is 2004. You've just downloaded Bejeweled 2 and you're playing through Puzzle mode. It's a bit difficult, but with the hints provided, you can do it! As you complete the fourth puzzle on the final planet, and that "WARP" button begins glowing green, you start to wonder: "what could be coming next?" As the screen whooshes through that rainbow vortex, what is waiting for you on the other end is not more puzzles, but a heavenly background, which fills with gems. The gems start to connect, and form a polygonal face, who speaks but one word: "Excellent." He vanishes, and the credits roll. At the end, a single line catches your eye:
"Thanks for playing! Keep an eye out for Bejeweled 3, coming soon to a computer near you!"
You await the day patiently, excited as to what could be coming. Then, six years and two spinoff titles later, the day finally comes. Bejeweled 3 is no longer just a joke in the credits of Bejeweled 2, but a real, tangible object. The disc rests in your hand, its glory almost paralyzing you as you move to put it into your computer...
Bejeweled 3 was made to celebrate Bejeweled's 10th anniversary. (It should be noted, though, that there was no 20th anniversary celebration, not even from the last vestiges of the Bejeweled Blitz Twitter account. Damn shame.)
There aren't any new special gems introduced here, making it the first game since 1 to not do so. That said, Supernova Gems are back after being absent from Bejeweled Blitz, though they're a lot harder to create now, since you're once again limited to only making matching moves.
The game features eight modes: the standard Classic and Zen modes, Lightning (it's like Blitz mode, but you have only one minute, but you can collect Time Gems to bank up time for an additional round), Quest (it's like Challenge mode, but instead of the planets of a solar system, your missions surround the Five Lost Artifacts of Bejeweled, and they do not share any running theme), Poker (a hidden mode where every match you make is recorded on a card, and your goal is to make the best five-card hand possible), Butterflies (a hidden mode where gems at the bottom of the board become Butterfly Gems, which fly upwards one square each turn, and you have to match them before they reach the spider at the top of the board), Ice Storm (a hidden mode where columns of ice push up from the bottom of the board and you have to make matches to push them downward, though vertical matches will shatter the ice completely) and Diamond Mine (the last hidden mode, in which you match gems near blocks of dirt to dig them up, and you only score points by digging through dirt that has gold nuggets, artifacts or crystals in it). These eight modes are all featured right on the title screen, unlike Bejeweled 2 where they were hidden behind an extra button, and the methods to unlock the hidden ones are each tied to one of the four main modes: to unlock Poker and Butterflies, reach level 5 in Classic or Zen, respectively, for Diamond Mine, reveal the first artifact in Quest, and for Ice Storm, score at least 100,000 points in a single Lightning mode game.
Speaking of Zen mode, they decided to lean into the "Zen" theming of it, and so this game's version of Zen mode introduces features intended to help players relax: a breathing modulator, subliminal messages and mantras, and binaural beats. The funny thing is, this game could have had a higher age rating, because one of the options for mantras was "Quitting Smoking", so to keep the E for Everyone rating, they changed it to the more general "Quit Bad Habits" theme.
This game is, as of the time of this writing, the final Bejeweled game released for PC. I'm personally mildly disappointed, because before Twist even came out, I have been having dreams that they released "Bejeweled 4". Maybe someday, but that possibility is looking very slim, and even if it did happen, I'm pretty sure the parts of it I saw in my dreams were way cooler than whatever EA would release. At least the backdrops are really pretty, and the Lightning mode theme is a remix of the Bejeweled Blitz theme that gets faster and more frenetic with each round. It's very good, you should check it out.
Bejeweled Stars, formerly called "Bejeweled Skies", is a browser-exclusive Facebook game. Basically imagine a timeline where Candy Crush was the original game and Bejeweled ripped it off. Bejeweled Stars is the game that would have been in that timeline. The game used to have the barest vestiges of a story, until this aspect was removed entirely. Before it was removed, the story would have followed the protagonists, Felis the star cat and Corvus the storm crow, as they tried to restore the stars to the night sky after something Corvus invented exploded and knocked them all loose.
As is tradition for Facebook games, Bejeweled Stars pivots the series away from every level being exactly the same, instead opting for each level to have a mission associated with it, such as breaking all the crystal on the board, or matching a certain number of gems. There is a turn limit associated with each level, and if you do not complete the objective in this many turns or less, you lose a life.
The game introduces two new special gem types, as well as an assortment of combinations of gems. The first of these special gems is the Darksphere, which replaces the Supernova Gem in that it is created by lining up six gems of the same color. When it's swapped, it turns all gems of the color it was swapped with into Hypercubes. The second is the SkyGem, which serves as material for this game's crafting system. You can use SkyGems you've collected to craft various powerups, such as one that turns regular gems into Flame Gems, Star Gems or Hypercubes, one that reshuffles the whole board, as well as some more situational ones, such as a powerup that pushes all Butterflies on the board back by three squares. Furthermore, Flame Gems can now be formed by getting four gems of the same color into a 2x2 block, in addition to the pattern that created them before. Special gems can also be swapped with each other to produce new, more powerful effects than just using them one at a time (for instance, the Supernova Gem's effect has now been changed to be caused by swapping two Star Gems together.)
This game is also the first to dynamically change the number of colors that appear on the board. (Bejeweled 3 teeechnically did this, with the Diamond Mine game mode ramping up from 4 colors to 6 over time, omitting orange gems, but this is the first game where it is actively done at all times.) Because of this, most levels only feature five colors: white, red, green, purple and blue. Orange and yellow gems only appear in some cases, which means that SkyGems of those colors are the rarest ones, a fact which the game lampshades.
This game solidly marks the end of the Bejeweled series, with only one other game being released after it: Bejeweled Champions, which isn't really notable, since it only exists to replace the WorldWinner version of Bejeweled 2 after the 2021 death of Flash. Although, fun fact about both Bejeweled Stars and Champions: The sprite sheets for both games are physically painful to look at!
(Stars on left, Champions on right) Why?! What purpose could arranging gems like this POSSIBLY serve?!
There also exists several ports of Bejeweled games, such as:
Jason Kapalka sold PopCap to EA in 2011, and then left the company entirely in 2014, which means that Stars (2016), the most recent update to Blitz (2018) and Champions (2020) were done without him. He did, however, perform a postmortem presentation for the series in which he detailed the story behind Bejeweled's development and legacy. You can watch it below.
This post was finished on April 4, 2023 at 2:56 PM.
🎵 Peter "Skaven" Hajba - Bejeweled 2 Theme