The Gadgets Page

When I downloaded the update to Bejeweled 2 [iTunes link] about a month ago, I found that there was a new game that had been added. It was called Bejeweled Blitz. Although it looked very similar to my normal Bejeweled game, it had some very different features. Firstly, the game only lasted a minute. I only had sixty quick seconds to make as many matches as I could before the entire game exploded in a sparkling array of jewels. You might think that I would play LESS because the game only lasts a minute, but the exact opposite is true. Since a game is only one minute, I can tell myself, “One more game,” for minutes upon minutes. An hour later, I’m still playing and I’m still telling myself, “Just one more game.”

The more significant difference between normal Bejeweled and Bejeweled Blitz, however, was that it is connected to my Facebook friends, so I can compete against everyone I know. I cannot tell you the joy I have when I beat my friends and see myself at the top of the list. I know it’s just a silly game, but that competitive spirit in me is an angry beast when I can’t beat someone. I actually considered unfriending some people on Facebook just because I couldn’t beat them. I didn’t and boy am I glad I didn’t because when I actually beat their score, I feel like I’m the king of the world. Sure, it’s an imaginary world filled with diamonds, but I’m the king of it, if only for a brief moment before Ernie kicks my butt again.

I Think It’s Just Random

“I’m beginning to think the high scores are just random. When I get a high score, it feels the same to me as when I get a low score,” Dan said.

My entire family is playing this game either on Facebook or on their iPhones. We were discussing the high scores at great length.

Mike replied, “I would think it was random too, except that Laura ALWAYS beats me.”

I chimed in, “And Ernie always beats me. It’s not just random.”

“So, how are you getting such high scores?” They all wanted to know.

How to Play

The goal of Bejeweled is to make groups of similar jewels. If you match three jewels by swapping one jewel with one right next to it, the three jewels disappear, your score gets higher and the jewels fall down with more replaced from the top.

Flame Gem

You can get four jewels in a row as well. For example, on this screen to the right, if you swap the green jewel with the red jewel on its right, you’ll get four in a row. If you do this, you’ll get a higher score added to your total, but more importantly, you’ll get a Flame Gem. There is a Flame Gem on this screen. It is the sparkling orange jewel on the third row from the bottom.

When you match a Flame Gem with two or more jewels of the same color, it will explode, taking all the jewels immediately around with it (a total of nine jewels will explode). You get a boost to your score, but things can be even better if you have Flame Gems nearby. You can cause huge chain reactions with Flame Gems that could clear your board very quickly.

Hypercubes

By matching five jewels in a row, you will make a Hypercube. You can see what a hypercube looks like from this screen shot on the left. When you swap out a hypercube with any jewel nearby, it will zap every jewel on the board of the same color, giving you a score for every jewel that has been zapped and changing the board completely.

Before Bejeweled Blitz, the Hypercube was the most desired of items. I used to do everything I could to set up ways for me to make hypercubes when I played Bejeweled before, but Blitz has changed that game for me and now I’m happy when a chance for a Hypercube comes along, but it’s not the most sought after achievement for me now.

Here is a screen shot of a Hypercube in action.

Star Gems

One thing that used to bug me on the old Bejeweled 2 game was that if I made an “L” (pictured to the right on this screen shot) or made a “T,” I only got a Flame Gem out of it. Since I had made a match of five jewels, I thought I deserved a hypercube or even something better because an “L” or “T” shape are HARDER to do than just five jewels in a row.

Bejeweled Blitz fixed that problem with their Star Gems. When you make an “L” or “T” shape with your jewels, you will get a Star Gem. When you match a Star Gem with two (or more) jewels of the same color, it will eradicate everything in its row and column. It racks up some mean points to your score and changes the board just as much as a Hypercube does.

Star Gems look different than normal Flame Gems. You can see the difference on the screen shot to the right. The yellow jewel on the top is a Star Gem and the lower one is a normal Flame Gem.

I actually prefer Star Gems to Hypercubes. If I have a choice between making a Hypercube and making a Star Gem, I’ll go with the Star Gem every time. Part of me feels vindicated each time I set off a Star Gem because I felt like I had deserved them for so long when I played Bejeweled 2. Plus, they’re so pretty when they go off with all those stars and sparkles. It’s quite the sight to see: screen shot of a Star Gem in action.

Multiplier Gems

If you make a move that destroys twelve or more jewels, you will get a Multiplier Gem on your board. You can get a Multiplier by causing a chain reaction of three or more, a Flame Gem that sets off another Flame Gem, a Star Gem or even a Hypercube if you choose the right color. You can see what one looks like on the screen shot to the right. It is a green Multiplier Gem and needs to be matched up with two (or more) other green jewels before it is activated. Once it is activated, your scores will be multiplied by the number. If you have more than one Multiplier Gem on your board, then they will increase when you activate one of them. I’ve seen multipliers as high as X7, but I’m sure they go as high as you can get them in a one minute time period.

It appears that the Multiplier is applied to the score of every match you make for the remainder of the game. I used to think that maybe they only affected jewels of the same color as the Multiplier, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Speed

The faster you are at making matches of jewels, the higher your Speed will be. It starts at Speed +200 and goes as high as Speed +1000. Whenever you dilly dally at your matchmaking, the Speed indicator will go away and you have to start right back at Speed +200 and work your way up again.

I have NO idea how this Speed number affects your score, but I know that it’s good. When I’m able to keep my Speed in the +1000 range for the entire minute, my score is definitely much higher than when I take my sweet time to make decisions about matches. Even when I create extraordinary matches that result in lots of Hypercubes and Star Gems, I end up with a better score if I move quickly.

Blazing Speed

If you work VERY quickly, then you can find yourself in Blazing Speed. The screen turns all red and the words “Blazing Speed” flash across the bottom of the board. This is a VERY rare occurrence for me, but I was able to get a screen shot of it to the right. I have never been able to make it happen when Mike has watched me play, so he doesn’t even believe that the Blazing Speed mode exists. He even scrutinized my screen shot to ascertain whether it was Photoshopped. As I said, it’s a very rare event.

Once again, I have NO idea how Blazing Speed affects the scoring. I’m too busy screaming and doing my best to keep making matches so I don’t lose it to monitor how high my score goes while I’m in that mode.

Update 12-11-09: Blazing Speed makes every jewel match you make act like a Flame Gem, so it explodes nine jewels. It’s VERY good for you to get into Blazing Speed mode, so keep those fingers moving and don’t freak out when the screen turns red because it’s more important than ever to make matches while you’re in Blazing Speed mode.

Update 12-13-09: It is possible to get into Blazing Speed mode more than once per game. When I got the 371,550 score today, I went into Blazing Speed mode twice and got my multiplier up to 7X.

How To Get A High Score

For a while, I felt like Dan did, that my high scores were just flukes. That somehow the scoring was random and my high scores were only because I played so often (every night before I go to bed). Now that I’m consistently able to get over 250,000, I feel that the scoring is NOT random and have finally worked out some tips that you can follow to get high scores as well.

Set Your Options

I went into the options the first time I played and turned off the sound effects and game music. I tend to play Bejeweled right before I go to bed, so I play some relaxing music on my iPod and then load up the game. I don’t want any explosion noises in the middle of my ambient playlist, so I turned the noises off.

It turns out that this is a huge advantage to me. While I don’t get to enjoy the lovely booms and bangs of my exploding jewels, I also don’t hear that pulsing noise when the game is ending. Mike plays with his sound effects on and that pulsing noise is enough to make me nervous from across the room. I don’t need any sound effects to make me nervous. I’m trying to wind down and fall asleep… oh yeah, and I’m trying to kick Ernie’s butt…

Additionally, I turned off the Auto Hint feature and my scores immediately went up. I don’t know if you get better scoring when you turn off Auto Hint, or if I didn’t zone out and wait around for the computer to tell me what to do when I knew the feature was gone. Either way, turning off Auto Hint helped me as well.

Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

If you have a Flame Gem, Star Gem or Hypercube, use them as soon as possible. I used to save my munitions until I had activated a Multiplier Gem so that it would be worth more, but that really isn’t a wise move. When you are playing as quickly as you need to with Bejeweled Blitz, you might accidentally set off a Hypercube by exploding it with a Flame Gem. If you do that, the game chooses the color with the LEAST amount of jewels to eradicate. If you set it off consciously, you can choose the color with the MOST amount of jewels.

Remember that Flame Gems and Star Gems need to be matched with other jewels of the same color, so if you save them, hoping to use them later, you might find them stranded and alone without any jewels to match up with. If you CAN match up a Flame Gem or Star Gem, DO IT.

Additionally, the chaos that happens around a Star Gem or a Hypercube usually causes SEVERAL chain reactions, which will give you more Multiplier Gems on the board to work with.

Finally, you get more points for your explosions when you do them yourself. If you think saving them up for your “Last Hurrah” at the end is better than using them, you’re forgetting that you sacrifice the points you would have made by matching them to their respective jewels.

Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break My Stride

You’ve got to keep on moving. The Speed modes are important and affect your score in some mysterious way that I haven’t fully figured out, but more importantly, you only have ONE minute to make your matches. The faster you go, the more matches you make and the more points you’ll get for your speedy matches.

As my grandfather always said, “Make a decision, even if it’s wrong.” It’s better to make a lot of three matches in a row than to sit around thinking of the perfect way to set up the jewels so that you’ll get a chance to make a Hypercube or Star Gem.

If you can’t see a move to make, keep looking until your Speed indicator disappears and THEN use the Hint button. I’m not sure, but I think that using the Hint button makes your Speed go away.

Work On The Bottom of the Board

I try to make all my matches from the bottom of the board. When a match disappears at the bottom of the board, the jewels fall down and have a greater potential of causing a chain reaction when compared to matches made at the top of the board. Sure, I have screwed up some potential Hypercubes and Star Gems by making matches at the bottom first, but the things that increase my score the most are Multiplier Gems and I can’t get them unless I cause some chain reactions.

Look At The Whole Board

When I work on the bottom of the board, I find myself focusing on one part of the board. This also happens when there is a Multiplier or Star Gem in an area that needs to be matched up. I do MUCH better on my scores if I remember to look at the WHOLE board. While I’m making a match on the left side and the jewels are falling down, I glance over to the right and hurry to make another match.

This is especially important if you tend to focus on the bottom of the board (see above recommendation) because the Multiplier Gems come from the top of the board and you want to match them up as quickly as possible.

Keep Matching During The Explosions

Just because you set off a Hypercube or Star Gem, doesn’t mean you should just sit there and watch the pretty destruction around you. Find the next match and do it. I’ve found that I can keep matching during the explosions, and while the jewels are still falling. I’ve made some mistakes, like making a three match when a falling jewel would have made it a four match, but when I keep matching during the explosions, I increase my Speed indicator and sometimes, it even pushes me into that elusive Blazing Speed mode.

The Trifecta of High Scoring

Update 01-28-10: When I finally got a high score over five hundred thousand, I thought I would stop playing altogether. I really felt like I could do no better than that, so why should I ever play again?

When the next week rolled around, however, and my high score evaporated into oblivion, I found myself below all my friends again, so I played some more, despite my “pinnacle” of success. The truth is, I’ve yet to beat that high score.

To get a score that high, you really need the ultimate trifecta. You need to get your multiplier up to at least five times pretty early in the game. You have to create and cause a lot of explosions with your hypercubes, star gems and flame gems. Finally, you have to get into Blazing Speed mode without losing your head. The day that I got over 500K, I got into Blazing Speed mode twice after getting my multiplier up to seven times.

I had no idea that I could get a score so high and it really bugs me that the Star Medals only go up to 250K. I totally deserve a 500K Star Medal for that one. Pop Cap Games says that there is a new update in the works. I sure hope Star Medals for over $250K are on their agenda.

Thank You, Pop Cap Games!!

I am SO grateful that Pop Cap Games added Bejeweled Blitz to my Bejeweled 2 game on my iPhone. It just showed up after a free update and has changed the game from being an occasional toy to a daily obsession. I am also thankful that my sister can play on Facebook, even though she doesn’t own an iPhone. All of us can compete together in one big happy orgy of exploding jewels and sparkling gems. Thank you, Pop Cap Games!

Download Bejeweled 2 for your iPhone here: Bejeweled 2 [iTunes link]