Beads 2

Introduction

Beads 2 is the sequel to "Beads", a color matching game inspired by several other games, e.g ”Bejeweled” and ”Tetris”.

How to play

The main aim of the game is to collect points by arranging beads of the same color in groups. This is accomplished by shooting a bead from the bottom of the screen. When you tap the screen, the bead at the bottom of the screen will be shot at the column where you tapped. When it hits an existing bead, it pushes the row that was hit up one notch. When a sufficient amount of beads (how many depends on difficulty level) are joined the group will be removed and beads will fall down from above to fill the gap. If sufficiently large new groups of beads are created in the process, the procedure will be repeated until no more large enough groups are present.

Scoring

The basic principle of the scoring is quite simple; the more beads you can remove in one go, the more points you get. The amount of points you get is exponential to the number of beads that are removed at once, making it a good idea to ”pile up” beads to get more points. If you remove two or more groups of beads in the same ”chain” you get extra points for this too. For each new group in the same ”chain”, the points are increased. This can lead to very high points in a long chain.

The score is also multiplied by the level multiplier. On level 1 the multiplier is 1x, on level 2 it is 2x etc. You always start out at level 1. The level increases as more beads are removed (as can be seen in the level progress bar at the right of the screen). To reach level 2 you need to remove 100 beads. You will need another [100 * current level] removed beads to reach each subsequent level.

Bombs

A bomb is a bead with special behavior and is essential to success in Beads. You earn a bomb when a large enough group of beads is removed (7 beads in Easy mode, eight beads in all other modes). There are several kinds of bombs, and which one you will get is randomly selected. To use a bomb you tap the bomb icon in the lower left of the screen, which will turn the current bead to turn in to bomb. You can have up to three bombs at a time.

The bomb types are:

Color bomb: Removes all beads that have the same color as the bead hit by the bomb.

Column bomb: Changes color of all beads in the column the bomb hits to the same color as the bead at the bottom of that column has.

Random bomb: Changes the color of all beads with the same color as the bead the bomb hits to the same random color.

4-in-1 bomb: Turns the current bead into four beads of the same color when it hits.

Switch bomb: When selecting this bomb you get the opportunity to make two beads trade places. After clicking the bomb icon, click on the two beads that should trade places. If you click the same bead twice that bead will be unselected again.

Time bomb: This bomb has a different behavior from all other bombs. It doesn't appear in your bomb repository, instead it appears among the normal beads in the playing field. They work as normal beads with a significant difference: when you create a group of them that is removed, you enter ”time mode” for 30 seconds. During this time all your scores are multiplied by the number of time bombs removed * 2, which makes it a great opportunity to collect massive amounts of points. Time bombs are also earned differently than all other bomb. You earn a time bomb when you create a long enough chain reaction of removed groups.

Game play

You have an unlimited amount of time to shoot your beads, but you only have a limited number of beads. To the left of the screen you can see the beads that you have at your disposal. Every time you shoot a bead, the supply is decreased. Luckily, each time a group of beads is removed you get an new bead in the supply, but the maximum supply decreases by one for each level, from 10 in level one to 3 in level eight. If you make it past level eight the maximum supply will stay at 3. When you run out of beads the game is over.

There are four different modes that Beads can be played in.

Easy

In Easy mode minimum requirement for removal is four adjoining beads. A group of seven or more will create a bomb.

Normal

In Normal mode minimum requirement for removal is five adjoining beads. A group of eight or more will create a bomb.

Hard

In Hard mode minimum requirement for removal is five adjoining beads. A group of eight or more will create a bomb. An added difficulty is that there is an additional bead color to handle.

Impossible

In Impossible minimum requirement for removal is six adjoining beads. A group of eight or more will create a bomb. Just like in Hard mode an added difficulty is that there is an additional bead color to handle.

Saving and loading a game

When you press the phone's ”back” button when playing a game, the game is automatically saved. You can have only one saved game at any given time and when you save a new game any existing saved game will be overwritten. To load a previously saved game, select "Play" and then "Resume" from the main menu. Note that you can only load a specific saved game once. However, after you have loaded a saved game you can save it again and reload it later.

Enjoy Beads!

Beads is © 253below.com

For more information about Beads 2 and our other apps, visit our home page at http://www.253below.com/beads2

All sounds in the game are from http://www.freesound.org