Block Match - Game Template

Create block puzzle games without coding.

Every board chooses how blocks get onto it, and each choice is a different game played with the same pieces: pieces falling from the top and steered with the keys, a tray of pieces dropped anywhere with the mouse, swapping two neighbours on a full board, or clicking a group of one colour away.

A whole row or column with no gaps in it, whatever colour - or three and more of one colour in a line, or any number of them all touching each other. The first is Tetris and 1010!, the others are every match-3 game there is.

Choose what the blocks already on the board do. A cleared line can close up on its own, so the holes left under the player's overhangs are still waiting for them afterwards - that is Tetris. Or every block can fall into whatever gap is under it when something is cleared, so the board collapses and one match lands on the next, which is where a match-3 chain comes from. Or blocks can fall after every move, so the board never holds a hole at all and a piece dropped across a gap comes apart - which is what makes pieces of several colours worth having. Or nothing moves at all, and the board keeps the shape the player built.

A shape is a set of squares and nothing else, painted on a little grid. Add the seven tetrominoes, the twelve pentominoes or the 1010! set with one click, then draw your own. Each shape decides whether it can be turned, and can carry its own colour so a piece is recognised by its shape.

Paint the blocks a board starts with, on a board of any size. The editor marks what already matches and would vanish before play, shows the biggest piece the board has to keep room for at the cursor, and warns about the boards that cannot be played at all - a top row that is already full, or a swap board with no move in it.

Create any number of boards, each with its own size, rules, speed curve and goal: a score to reach, a number of blocks to clear, or clearing the board completely. The score carries from one board to the next and each game keeps its own high score.