Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26729468-20151013183433/@comment-24668482-20151014164927

Right, I'll just post bits and pieces in different posts to avoid losing again (or never getting round to finishing).

In terms of game play, Treasure box is just Gem Match 95% of the time. I know you are a fan of Gem Match, so I think you will enjoy Treasure Box. And everything you need to know to do well in Treasure Box is the same as Gem Match. There are extra features since Treasure Box has 3 different game modes and also some more creative board set ups (having separate boxes instead of one continuous game board for some configurations, for example). These extra features arguably make it a potentially much more interesting game (some kinks probably still need working out).

And the important thing is that the underlying rules and mechanics are identical to that of Gem Match. So you might have different end goals because of different modes, or you might have to think more strategically because of the more creative board set ups, but the actual game play itself remains identical. If you enjoy Gem Match, you will hopefully enjoy Treasure Box even more.

There isn't a Treasure Box page here yet. And to be honest it will be a while coming, I don't really have time for the game or this wiki at the moment, and have been about as successful at attracting active contributors here as I have been at the SS wiki (as in a complete failure). But the good news is that since the core mechanics of the two match-3 games are identical, once you know the different modes of Treasure Box you can simply use the tips on the Gem Match page on the SS wiki (and as a fan of that game, you probably won't even need to read that).

What I mean by core mechanics is that the physics of how the games work is the same. The gems fall in the same way to fill space. Their behavior is the same. And so are the types of gems and other features you encounter, in general.

There are the same amount of different coloured regular gems, and they behave the same way as in Gem Match. There are locked gems, that also behave the same as in Gem Match, and there blocks, that also behave the same as in Gem Match. So if you know how to make basic matches of 3 or more in Gem Match, you know how to do it in Treasure Box. If you know how to unlock a locked gem by including it in a match of 3 or more in Gem Match, then you know how to do it in Treasure Box. If you know how to get rid of those annoying blocks breaking up the game board in Gem Match, then you know how to do it in Treasure Box.

And importantly, if you know how to create special gems in Gem Match, and how to combine those special gems to make board clearing special moves, then you know how to do that in Treasure Box too. If you know that combining 4 gems of the same colour in a horizontal/vertical line will create a vertical/horizontal striped gem, and that creating a T or L in the same colour will create a bomb gem, and that combining 5 or more will create a multicoloured gem, then you can already do all these things in Treasure Box. And if you know that using these special gems in matches will trigger them, then you can already trigger them in Treasure Box. And if you know how much more fun it is not to combine them in matches, but ro instead actually to maneuver them together so that you can simply swap two special gems with each other to make a powerful special move, then really you are already set to rule Treasure Box.

The real difference between the game is that Gem Match only has one mode. The gaol of every game is the same. But Treasure Box has 3 modes, each with a slightly different goal:



When you go to play a game of Treasure Box, you will see that there is a wax seal symbol at the top of the 'Solve' window. The icon in this wax seal tells you what mode the Puzzle is currently in (it will rotate through them randomly, but it heavily favours Plates mode). Tapping on the icon will tell you exactly what the mode is, and what you need to do to win the game in that mode.

Plates Mode

Plates mode is the most common Treasure Box mode. The goal is to remove the plates from the game board, by making matches over them. The banner at the bottom of the screen tells you how many plates are left to remove so you can keep track of your progress. There are two types of plates, brown plates just need one match made over them and they are removed. Silver plates sit on top of brown plates, so these squares need 2 matches made over them to remove them. The first match will remove the brown silver plate, revealing the brown plate. The second match will remove the brown plate.



Plates mode = Gem Match.

It is the exact same game.

Think of the plates as the yellow borders you see in Gem Match. The brown plates are simply 'squares with single yellow borders' in Gem Match. The silver plates are simply 'squares with double yellow borders' in Gem Match.



They work in EXACTLY the same way. So making a match of 3 or more over them will remove them. There has to be a gem sitting on the plate, and that gem has to be removed from the game board in order to remove the plate (just like the squares with yellow borders in Gem Match). So if they are sitting in a row or column cleared by a horizontal/vertical striped gem, they will be removed. If they are in the blast radius of a triggered bomb gem, they will be removed. If they are in the path of destruction of some special move, they will be removed. As long as there was a gem sitting on the plate and the move you make removes that gem from the board, that plate will be 'broken' and also removed from the board.

Palette mode

Palette mode is a much more basic version of the game. The goal is to remove a certain number of certain coloured gems.



The banner at the bottom tells you which gems you are looking for, and how many of each type you must remove from the game board to win. You can remove the gems in any way you want - making matches of that colour or just blasting the board with special moves. Every gem of that colour removed counts, no matter how it is removed.

Stargazer

Stargazer mode is a pretty interesting variation. The goal is not to really remove gems, but to maneuver the gold sun, moon and saturn icons to the open 'caskets' at the bottom of the board. The only way to remove these icons is to get them to fall into the caskets by making matches of gems (or otherwise clearing gems) underneath them. The natural game physics is both your friend and your worst enemy in this game variation.



The banner at the bottom tells you which icons you need to remove from the board, and how many to expect. Often, there will be none on the board when you start a game, you need to make matches so that they drop down from the top, and then keep making matches under them until you maneuver them into one of the open caskets (watch out for areas of the bottom of the board that are not actually caskets, if you end up with one of these sitting on a normal bottom segment it can be difficult to maneuver it over a casket).

Although you can't make matches with the Sun, Moon, Saturns themselves, you can swap them with other gems to move them around, as long as the other gem then forms part of a match. In the picture above you could swap the sun with the orange gem to its right as the orange gem would then be part of a vertical column of 3 orange gems. The sun would then be in the orange gems position. This allows you to move them left and right along the board as you need (though in this case there is no need to do that as simply swapping the red gem in the red circle with the green gem above it would make a match of 3 green gems and allow the sun to fall into the casket directly below it....)

Sorry, I am out of time, so will have to come back to this later. But hopefully that is a little help. There is plenty of other things to talk about in this game that might help.