Neon Crush

Neon Crush keeps its rules short. Put pieces of the same type together in a combination and they burst, earning points. The developer is open about it being a standard match-3, a familiar kind of casual puzzle, and puts the detail into its power-ups instead.

Three kinds are described. One bursts every piece of a single type. Another bursts all the pieces on the screen at once. The third is a bomb, which clears a region of the board around it and adds more to your score.

On a desktop you play with the mouse, clicking and then dragging and dropping pieces into a match. On mobile there are touch buttons on screen. The frame is wide, 1280 by 720, and the developer encourages playing alongside friends to see who scores highest.

With a mouse, click a piece and drag and drop it to form a match of pieces of the same type. On a phone or tablet, use the touch buttons shown on screen. Each matching combination bursts and adds points. When a power-up is available, use it to burst one type of piece, the whole screen or an area around a bomb.

Ordinary matches score, but the three power-ups are where the larger clears come from, and each has a different reach: one type of piece, the entire screen, or the patch around a bomb. Before using one, check which of those three you are holding, since they do quite different jobs.

A match-3 in a landscape frame (1280 by 720). Three power-up types are described: single-type burst, full-screen burst and bomb. Desktop uses mouse drag and drop; mobile uses on-screen touch buttons. Scoring is the main goal.

Jewel Christmas has its own special pieces, Xmas Explosion decorations that can be combined, and Gem Legends creates power gems from matches of four or five.