peer2peergames

Cascade

Everybody gets the same board and their own copy of it. Swap two tiles side by side to make a line of three or more, the line clears, what is above it falls, new tiles drop in from the top, and if the falling makes another line that clears too: one swap can run for several steps and each step is worth more than the last. A line of four or five leaves a Streak, a Burst or a Prism behind, and two of those swapped together take out a great deal of the board. Three boards of two minutes each, and the most points wins.

Play Cascade Leaderboard

The board and the swap

  1. Seven columns by seven rows, and six kinds of tile. Every seat races the same board, dealt from the seed before anybody presses Ready, on its own copy.
  2. A move is a swap of two tiles that are side by side, up and down or left and right. Never a diagonal, and never two tiles further apart.
  3. A swap is legal only if it makes a line of three or more of one kind, or if one of the two tiles is a Prism. Anything else is refused and the tiles slide back.
  4. Drag a tile toward its neighbour, or tap one tile and then the other. Both do the same thing.
  5. The board is dealt with no line already on it and at least one swap that works, so there is always something to find.

The cascade

  1. The line you made clears. Everything above it falls, and new tiles come in from the top of each column.
  2. If the falling makes a new line, that clears as well, and so on. The whole run is one cascade and it is resolved by the server before the page answers.
  3. A cleared tile is worth sixty points at the first step, and every step after the first is worth more: the multiplier runs 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 18 as the chain goes on.
  4. Making a Streak is worth sixty on top, a Burst a hundred and twenty, a Prism two hundred.
  5. The tiles that fall into a column are fixed before the game starts, so the same board falls the same way for everybody however fast or slow they play.

Streaks, Bursts and Prisms

  1. A line of four leaves a Streak. Clear it and it takes its whole row or its whole column, whichever way the line ran.
  2. A line of five in an L or a T leaves a Burst. Clear it and it blows the three by three around it, twice.
  3. A line of five straight leaves a Prism. Swap it with any tile and every tile of that kind goes.
  4. A mark fires inside the cascade, so what it clears is scored at the step it fired on, and anything it catches fires in turn.
  5. Swapping two marked tiles together is a combination, and there are six of them: two Streaks, a Streak and a Burst, two Bursts, a Prism with a Streak, a Prism with a Burst, and two Prisms. The last of those clears the board.

The clock

  1. Every seat presses Ready. Three seconds later the board is live for everybody at once.
  2. A board lasts two minutes. It ends sooner if somebody runs out first: twenty seconds after the first seat is finished, the board is over for everybody.
  3. Swaps are timed by the server when it receives them, never by your phone. A quarter of a second between swaps is the fastest the board accepts.
  4. If no swap on your board clears anything, the board is shuffled for you. If a shuffle cannot find a playable board, the board is over for you and you keep what you scored.

How a sitting ends

  1. Three boards, and the points carry across all three.
  2. Most points wins. Equal points are separated by the time taken, shorter first, and if those are equal too the place is shared.
  3. A resignation or a missed deadline ends the sitting for that player. Every move has the same deadline, chosen when the table is made, and it is the dead hand on Ready rather than a limit on a swap.
  4. The seed is published when the game is over, so anybody can replay the log and check that no tile moved.

Worth knowing before you start

  1. Clearing low is worth more than clearing high: everything above a clear falls, so a line along the bottom turns over more of the board and sets up more steps.
  2. A Prism is the one swap that needs no line. Save it for the kind you have most of.
  3. The board is the same for everybody, so a swap you can see is a swap your opponent can see too. Speed is half the game and the other half is seeing the longer chain.
  4. Nobody can see your board, only your score and how many swaps you have made.

THE CLOCK IS THE SERVER'S. Every swap is timed when the server receives it and never when your phone sent it, so a fast connection is worth nothing and a slow one costs you only the time it really took. The board goes live for every seat at the same moment, from the same seed, and the seed is published when the game ends: the whole sitting can be replayed afterwards and checked tile for tile. A SCRIPT CAN SEARCH A MATCH-THREE BOARD, and we may as well say so plainly: a program reading the page can look at every legal swap and pick the best one far faster than a person can see it. That is why there is a ceiling on how fast a seat may swap - a hundred and fifty swaps a minute, sustained, is above anything a person does and a seat over it is disqualified for that sitting and left unrated. The ceiling stops a script from winning a RATED game at inhuman speed. It does not stop a careful program from playing well at a human pace, and nothing can: the board is public to the player, which is what makes the game fair, and a program allowed to look at it has the same information. What the leaderboard is protected from is the speed, not the search.

Cascade terms

A cascade
One swap and everything that follows from it: the line clears, tiles fall, new ones arrive, and any line the falling makes clears as well. All of it is one move.
A step
One round of a cascade. The first step is worth the base value, and every step after it multiplies: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 18.
A Streak
Made by a line of four. When it clears it takes its whole row, or its whole column, whichever way the line ran.
A Burst
Made by a line of five in an L or a T. When it clears it blows the three by three around it, twice.
A Prism
Made by a line of five straight. Swap it with any tile and every tile of that kind goes. It is the one legal swap that makes no line.
A combination
Two marked tiles swapped together. There are six, and two Prisms together clear the whole board.
Spent
A board with no swap left that clears anything. It is shuffled for you first, and if that cannot find a playable board the board is over for you.
The stream
The tiles that fall into each column, fixed from the seed before anybody presses Ready. Nobody is shown one before it falls.

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.