Crystal Jewels

THE BOARD
The board is eight columns by eight rows of cut gems. Drag a gem toward one of its four neighbours and it follows your finger or pointer. Release on a valid match and the two gems trade places; release on a dead swap and both slide back. Three or more gems of one colour shatter, the gems above fall in, and a single move can chain several cascades. Pause for a moment and the board offers a swap hint.

TWO WAYS TO PLAY
Entertainment is the level campaign: sixty stages over three maps, each with its own objectives and move budget. Mining is the endless vertical run: a gem-only intro, two opening rock rows and a countdown in place of the move counter. Every cleared layer or expired timer raises one more rock row, and the run ends only when rock reaches the top.

THREE MAPS
Crystal Meadow covers the first twenty stages with fewer gem colours and generous moves. Amethyst Cavern runs to stage forty, with thicker stone and the first frozen tiles. Diamond Summit closes the campaign at stage sixty, where the full palette is in play and stages often ask for stone and two colours at once.

OBJECTIVES
Every stage lists its goals beside the board and counts them as you play. Chip layered stone tile by tile, collect a set number of ruby, emerald, topaz, amethyst, amber or sapphire gems, break every sheet of ice, or reveal the heart stone and walk it down to the bottom row. Mining stages count metres of depth. Each stage is marked Normal, Ice, Treasure or Deep before you start.

SPECIAL GEMS
Four gems in a row forge a line gem that sweeps its whole row or column. Five or more in one straight line forge a rainbow gem that removes every gem of a chosen colour. A horizontal run crossing a vertical run forges a bomb that blasts three by three. Four gems of one colour in a two by two square forge a lightning gem, which strikes a distant gem and favours the tile below the heart.

COMBINATIONS
Specials combine when you swap one into another. Line with line clears a full cross. Bomb with bomb opens a five by five crater. Bomb with line widens the sweep into three rows and three columns. Rainbow with a plain gem clears that colour, rainbow with a bomb turns the colour into bombs and detonates them together, and rainbow with lightning sends a bolt through every gem of the partner colour.

MINING RUNS
Mining opens on a gem-only board with a short descent notice. Exactly two solid rock rows then rise and settle before the countdown starts. Clear the exposed layer before time runs out, or let the clock expire: either result raises exactly one new rock-only row and resets the countdown. Cycles follow the current soil tier, from 48 seconds down to 40; they do not shorten after every clear. Pressure accelerates the clock to x1.5 when rock fills more than half the board and x1.7 above seventy percent.

Mining always uses four gem colours. Every gem removed by a match or any special effect damages each rock it touches. Line beams, bombs and lightning hit rock inside their paths; the retained cell that creates a special still chips adjacent rock; swapping two rainbows removes one durability layer from every rock. Harder strata use cracks, not numbers, to show durability. Rock reaching the top ends the run.

THE VAULT HOME
Home belongs to the world rather than to a settings list. Continue picks up the stage you left, separate gates lead into Entertainment and Mining, and the daily vault and progress panels show how many stages are cleared. In play the board comes first, with score, moves or time and the objectives around it. Stage maps scroll with arrow runes when a map holds more stages than fit.

SETTINGS, HELP AND RECORDS
Settings gather language, music, sound effects and your player name. Help uses the real gem art to explain swaps, stone, ice, the heart stone and each special. Leaderboards keep entertainment and mining tables apart and compare a run with your personal record.

EIGHT LANGUAGES
English, Vietnamese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Hindi and French, switchable at any moment from the vault.

Playing needs no account. Stages, progress and records stay on the device you play on; a connection is only used for the online leaderboard. On Android the system Back button walks back through the vault screens instead of leaving the game.

Features

• Direction-based drag swaps one neighbouring gem
• Sixty entertainment levels across three maps
• Endless Mining opens with two rock rows, then rises one row per clear or timeout
• Four mining gem colours with x1.5 and x1.7 rock-pressure countdown speeds
• Every gem effect can damage touched rocks, including global double-rainbow damage
• Crack-only rock durability art and translucent special badges
• Gem language orb — eight languages

Tips

• Four gems of one colour in a two-by-two square make a lightning gem, which favours the tile below the heart stone — perfect on heart-stone stages.
• Swap two specials together for bigger effects: bomb with bomb opens a five-by-five crater, ideal against thick stone.
• In Mining the clock speeds up to x1.5 once rock fills over half the board, so chip rock early instead of saving moves for big combos.

What's new

This update makes every leaderboard fair and transparent. • Rankings now list only scores submitted by real players. Computer-controlled opponents remain for practice and challenge, but their results never appear on the board. • Changing your nickname keeps your existing scores and rank instead of starting over. • Suggested nicknames are freshly generated and are never borrowed from other players. In Crystal Jewels, both the Entertainment and Mining leaderboards now show only real players' runs. Your offline board keeps your own best results, and gem matching, levels and depth progress are unchanged. Thanks for playing — every score you see now comes from a real person.

Questions and answers