iSameGame 6: the 2008 puzzle, rebuilt in 3D, with boards you can share
iSameGame was one of the first things I put on the App Store, in October 2008. SameGame is a simple puzzle: tap a group of touching tiles of one colour to clear it, the tiles above fall, and empty columns close up. A group of n scores n(n−1)×10, so the whole game is about patience, herding colours together until one tap clears twenty and pays 3,800. People played it for years. Then the binary aged out, and for a long time the listing was a fossil.
It is back, as a new app on the same record, and I have kept the two things that made the original worth playing.
The boards can always be cleared
In 2008 Christopher League wrote a generator for the game that builds each board backwards, putting groups onto it in reverse so that there is always an order that takes everything off. That generator, rewritten in Swift, is still the way every board is dealt. You never get a board that was hopeless from the start, and the 2,000-point bonus for clearing it all is always on the table.
The scoring is the original
Two tiles are 20 points, ten are 900, twenty are 3,800. The bonus table for what is left at the end is the one from 2008 too. If you remember your best from back then, it is comparable.
What is new
Spheres, in 3D. The tiles are spheres now, lit, with a little bounce when you select them and a burst when they go. Drag to tilt the board, pinch to zoom on a phone.
Every board is a code. This is the part I wanted most. The board you are looking at has a
code, C-7K3P9Q say, and that code deals exactly the same board on any iPhone or iPad. Send
it to a friend and you are playing the same puzzle, so the scores mean something. The link
carries your score as the target to beat.
Daily boards. Each day has four boards, one per size, the same for everyone in the world at once. Game Center keeps a leaderboard for each of them, plus all-time leaderboards per size and achievements. On iOS 26 you can challenge friends on today’s board from inside the game.
Four sizes. Easy is 8×10 with three colours, Classic is the 8×12 five-colour board from 2008, Large is 10×16, Expert is 12×18. Unlimited undo and redo, a hint when you want one, and every finished game is kept with a replay you can watch move by move.
Your look, your colours. The spheres are matte with a soft light, or glossy, or flat. There is a high-contrast palette for colour-blind players, and symbols on the spheres if you want each colour to have a shape too. The selection can be an outline, a wire cage or a glow.
Bests that follow you. Your bests and your history sync through iCloud between iPhone and iPad, so a reinstall does not wipe the record. And because everyone presses New a few times looking for a board that leans their way, every board dealt is remembered: a swipe across the score row goes back to the one you skipped.
It needs iOS 26 on an iPhone or an iPad, in English, Japanese, German, French or Spanish. No account; Game Center is optional. The product page has the scoring table and the questions people ask.