Gem Cascade

Cinevva's analyzer read this game's design doc and its source, then wrote the brief below. "Make your own" hands it to the game creator as your opening message, so you start from a real spec rather than a one-line idea.

Create a portrait-friendly, canvas-based match-3 puzzle game titled “Gem Cascade.” Use a full-screen dark navy/purple gradient background with a few subtly drifting, low-opacity blue and purple star-like dots. Center the game vertically and horizontally. At the top display large bold white text “GEM CASCADE,” with the subtitle “MATCH • CHAIN • CASCADE” in muted blue-lavender beneath it. Above the board, show three translucent rounded statistic panels labeled SCORE, BEST, and MOVES, with the current score, saved best score, and successful move count beneath each label.

The main playfield is an 8-column by 9-row grid of colorful glowing gems inside a very dark rounded rectangular board panel with a soft shadow. Leave small gaps between cells and give each cell a subtle translucent dark rounded-square backing. Each gem is a rounded square, about 72% of a cell’s size, with a bright radial highlight toward its upper-left, a colored luminous body, a darker edge, a soft colored outer glow, and a thin semi-transparent white outline. Use exactly six gem types/colors: coral-pink, golden orange, aqua/teal, blue, purple, and pale yellow. Generate the initial board randomly while preventing any pre-existing horizontal or vertical run of three identical gems.

Implement standard adjacent-swap match-3 interaction. The player can click/tap one gem and then an orthogonally adjacent gem to swap them, or drag/swipe from a gem toward one of its four neighbors. Highlight a selected gem with a bright white rounded outline and glow; show a subtler hover outline when applicable. Ignore input while pieces are resolving. Only accept a swap if it creates at least one match of three or more identical gems in a row or column. If it creates no match, swap the gems back, briefly shake the board, and show the message “That swap needs a match.” A valid swap counts as a move only after all resulting matches and cascades finish.

When matches are found, clear every horizontal or vertical run of at least three, including all cells participating in overlapping runs. Animate matched gems with a brief scale-up/pulse, colored burst particles, and floating score text. Award matches.length × 60 × chain-number points, where the first wave has chain number 1 and each subsequent automatic cascade increments the chain. After clearing, collapse each column downward to fill gaps and spawn new random gems above the board; animate falling pieces into place. Continue finding, clearing, scoring, and collapsing until no matches remain. Show “Match cleared” for a normal clear and “2x CASCADE!”, “3x CASCADE!”, etc. for later waves, with a bright floating “+points” indicator. Track the highest chain reached in the current session and display “BEST CHAIN Nx” near the bottom whenever it is greater than one. Persist the best score in local storage under a game-specific key and update it whenever the current score exceeds it.

Below the board, show the instructional/status text “Swap two gems to begin” initially, centered in pale blue-white. Temporarily replace it with “Match cleared,” a cascade message, “No match — try another swap” when no matches exist after resolution, “That swap needs a match” for an invalid swap, or “New board” after reset. Show the status text in yellow while its temporary timer is active. Include a keyboard shortcut R/r that resets score, moves, chain record, and creates a fresh valid board.

Add subtle game feel: short synthesized tones for swaps, successful clears, cascades, and invalid swaps; particle bursts using the matched gem color; floating score labels that rise and fade; gentle tile pulsing; falling tile animation; and a brief shake on invalid swaps. The visual style should be polished neon-glass arcade UI, with crisp system sans-serif typography, responsive sizing, and no scrolling. Scale the board to fit the viewport with approximately 28px horizontal margin and reserve about 210px of vertical space for header, stats, and footer; keep tiles at a usable minimum size around 34px. Support mouse, touch, and pointer input via a full-screen canvas.