Swappu from mcgarrybowen: Not really related.

Enhancing user experience takes polishing to its extreme. Little details here and there sum up and make a difference. One little thing that bothered me for a very long time was this: you can’t swap a jewel into an empty space.

Take a look at this:

A Typical Situation in Match 3 Games

Players feel an urge to make the swap, but they can’t because there are jewels falling into the empty space. If they try, they will get either no response or a beep. People just seemed to accept this, thinking it was their fault. It happens in many Match 3 games, so this isn’t really a problem. But I wanted to make it better.

I thought about how I could allow such swaps. Then I realized the swap bothered me not because it wasn’t allowed but because there was no satisfying reaction.

Hence, the Half Swap was born:

In Jewel Next, if you swap a jewel into an empty space, the jewel will move a little toward that direction and come back—feeling funny and elastic. Very satisfying!

I hope you can enjoy this little experience!

Jewelry Box is the biggest feature in Jewel Next. Players can keep hard-earned jewels in their own Jewelry Box. Let’s take a look:

THIS is the heart of Jewel Next. Players match, create, collect, and put jewels in there. However, it didn’t exist in earlier builds—not even in design documents. But you know, not all hope is lost. Its dinosaur ancestor was there—in a Game Over screen:

Can you spot the Jewels section, a little below the middle, where the unlocked jewels and a question mark are displayed? That is the dinosaur of Jewelry Box. We polished it, and it became prettier:

It definitely looks prettier, but it is still not a jewelry box. Then around February 2012, when I was reading a book titled “Steve Jobs” using iBooks, I realized that a shelf would perfectly fit in Jewel Next. This is how a shelf looks like in iBooks:

With the help of Steve Jobs, Jewelry Box finally came into existence:

This is how Jewelry Box came into the game—the very first in its genre! Oh, by the way, the box also has a cover.