Most match-three guides assume rules the clone in front of you does not have. This site ships its own Jewel Crash engine, so every rule below comes from its source. Read the rules once and your swaps stop being guesses.
What counts as a match in Jewel Crash
The board is a fixed 8 by 8 grid with a cell size of 56, set in GameConfig. Default boards draw from five gem colors, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Purple.
The MatchDetector scans every row and every column for runs of three or more identical gems in a straight line. Diagonals never count. When a horizontal run and a vertical run of the same color share a cell, the engine merges them into one result and counts the shared cell once. Merged runs become T, L, Cross, or Five shapes.
Two classification rules are worth memorizing. Any merged shape covering seven or more cells is treated as a Five. A T appears when the shared cell sits at the middle of one run and the end of the other, and an L appears when the shared cell sits at the end of both runs.
Legal swaps and how the board starts
The SwapValidator accepts a swap only when three conditions hold. Both cells sit next to each other. Both cells are movable, with no blockers or holes. The swapped position produces at least one run of three.
One exception overrides the match requirement. A gem carrying the Rainbow special makes any adjacent swap legal, even one that matches nothing.
Failed swaps animate back over 0.15 seconds and cost you nothing except time. The BoardGenerator fills new boards so that no starting run of three exists, trying each color in random order per cell. If every available color would complete a run, which is rare with five colors, it places the first candidate anyway.
The scoring formula the game actually runs
GameManager scores each cascade step with this arithmetic.
floor(10 x cleared gems x cascade multiplier + 50 x activated specials)
The cascade multiplier comes from the depth of the step, from the array 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5 in GameConfig. Depth 0 is the match your swap made. Each automatic follow-up match adds one depth level, and the multiplier stops growing at 5.
Two facts about this formula change how you should play.
First, points scale with the number of gems cleared and with nothing else. A five-in-a-row clears five gems and pays 50 base points at depth 0. A plain three pays 30. There is no direct payout for the shape itself.
Second, GameConfig defines Match4Bonus 1.5, TShapeBonus 2, LShapeBonus 2, and Match5Bonus 3, but a search of every file under src/games/jewel-crash finds no code that applies them. The live scoring path ignores them. Treat any guide that promises a triple payout for five-in-a-row as wrong for this implementation.
Special gems and the shapes that create them
SpecialGemResolver maps shapes to specials as follows. Four in a horizontal line create a RowClear. Four in a vertical line create a ColClear. T, L, and Cross shapes create a Bomb. Five in a line create a Rainbow. A plain three creates nothing.
The special spawns at the pivot cell, which is the intersection point for merged shapes or the middle cell for straight runs. That cell is not cleared. It transforms.
Specials pay in two ways. Each activation during a clear adds a flat 50 points. Activated specials also chain into further clears, which pushes later steps deeper into the multiplier table. The chain loop runs to a safety limit of 100 cascade steps.
Level budgets and star thresholds
When a level JSON file is missing, LevelData generates a default. The board stays 8 by 8. The move budget is max(15, 35 minus 2 times the level number), so it shrinks by two moves per level and floors at 15. The score objective is 1000 plus 500 times the level number. Stars sit at exactly one, two, and three times that objective.
The objective is score, never a gem quota. One deep cascade can therefore be worth several small swaps, since a depth 2 step pays double and a depth 3 step pays two and a half times.
A checklist built from these rules
- [ ] Prefer swaps that clear four or more gems, because points track cleared cells.
- [ ] Hunt intersections, since a five cell T or L clears five gems and leaves a Bomb behind.
- [ ] Watch gravity refills during a cascade, because they extend the chain and raise the depth multiplier.
- [ ] Save Rainbow gems for moments when any adjacent swap is useful, since Rainbow swaps are always valid.
- [ ] Compare your remaining moves against the objective before you chase a cascade.
- [ ] Ignore the shape bonus numbers from the config, they are dead code in this build.
Honest downsides follow from the same files. The dead shape bonuses mean the scoreboard rewards cleared cells and special activations only, so a dramatic five-match pays little beyond its fifth gem plus the Rainbow it creates. Move budgets tighten by two per level, and boards with no valid swap remain possible on five colors.
Load a board on the [Jewel Crash game page](/en/jewel-crash) and test the formula. Count the gems a favorite swap clears, multiply by 10 and by the cascade multiplier, and compare with the floating score text. If your arithmetic disagrees with the popup, send us the swap and both numbers, because the engine and this article should match exactly.
