‘Bejeweled Stars’ & PopCap’s Plan To Take Down ‘Candy Crush’

The match-3 genre isn’t a new one and while Bejeweled may be a household name, certain auto insurance firms aren’t making jokes about Bejeweled in their commercials. They’re making jokes about Candy Crush , and for good reason: it’s a behemoth, and worse yet, a relative newcomer.

Bejeweled Stars is a game six years in the making that aims to take that crown back from Candy Crush, by using what Heather Hazen, the executive producer of the Bejeweled franchise at PopCap, calls the three pillars of innovation: meaningful social interaction, a sense of achievement and strategy-based board mechanics.

Bejeweled Stars’ plan to knock down that first pillar is a Bejeweled Stars-specific emoji system called Charms. This system fosters conversation between players by using Facebook Connect to link players into a built-in friends list.

Players can then send friends messages using the emojis/Charms they’ve collected through gameplay to say something about “what your game experience is,” Hazen told iDigitalTimes, as shared experiences create a meaningful connection between gamer and game. These Charms can be unlocked by successfully completing levels certain ways.

“You might only get a certain charm if you’re playing a limited time event, and that says something about who you are,” Hazen said. “When you play, you might only get a charm if you trade it with a friend, so there’s meaning behind the Charms themselves beyond just the words or construct they represent.”

As players progress through the game, the stars they earn will fill out Constellations, with each set of Constellations coming with its own set of Charms Bejeweled Stars players can use to speak with one another. Because the sense of progression is connected to social-based rewards, it marks a sense of achievement for a player.

Lastly, Bejeweled Stars enables players to create their own power-ups to directly change board mechanics depending on player strategy. This idea could open up the match-3 genre for endless potential, with each playthrough being affected by personal playstyle, like the open-ended world of Grand Theft Auto III.

“Because I happen to be a woman and I have a child, and I have to go pick him up from daycare, I play games when I’m waiting on him to get out of daycare. That’s a five minute session. Well my husband, he takes the bus to go to work every day, and so he has five minutes while he’s waiting at the bus stop,” Hazen said. “But the experience that we want is five minutes. So no matter how you slice it, at least in my perspective, what you want to design is games that are easily picked up in those moments where you are desiring an entertainment moment.”

While power-ups won’t be directly purchasable in-app in Bejeweled Stars , this is a conscious design decision. Instead, players can purchase Skygems, the very same materials Bejeweled Stars players earn in-game that go into creating power-ups.

“We have a term called backseat Bejeweled -ing, basically anytime anyone is playing Bejeweled of any flavor on a big screen where there are other people watching, you can hear the crowd sort of be like ‘oh there’s a match,’ or ‘get the yellow one,’ or ‘get it in the bottom right corner.’ I think that’s such a great example of how different people view boards differently,” said Hazen.

Bejeweled Stars’ in-app purchases aren’t necessary to play the game, but instead are there for players who want to either speed up gameplay or get ahead quickly resource-wise.

“I personally start at the bottom of the Bejeweled board because I like to create big cascades, and so in my mind, creating the opportunity for the gems to drop gives me more opportunities for free matches, special gems, etc.,” Hazen told iDigi. “I have other friends who play and specifically focus on creating special gems. So if they know they want to ‘match-4’, then they don’t rely on cascades — they strategically set up the board to create a ‘match-4,’ to create a flame gem. So they’re always looking for the special gem. It’s indicative of how different people approach different boards and different strategies.”

Bejeweled Stars is currently available for download on iOS and Android. Bejeweled Blitz (iOS/Android) is available for download as well, as is Bejeweled Classic (iOS/Android).