Beads

Beads is a puzzle game for android devices that is inspired by several other games, e.g ”Bejeweled”, ”Tetris” and "Bubble breaker". It is simple yet fun and could easily be addictive.

How to play

The main aim of the game is to collect points by arranging beads of the same color in groups of five or more. This is accomplished by shooting a bead from the bottom of the sceen. When you tap the screen, the bead at the bottom of the screen will be shot in the direction of the point you tapped. When (and if) it hits an existing bead, it pushes the row that was hit up one notch. Any combination of five or more adjecent beans of the same color that is created by this will be removed and new beads will fall down from above to fill the gaps. If any new groups of five or more beads are created in the process, the procedure will be repeated until no more groups of five or more 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. Five beads give you 5 points, six gives you 7 points, seven gives you 9, eight gives you 13, nine gives you 17 etc. The amount of points you get is exponential to the number of beads that is 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 number of beads you are awarded points for is increased by the number of previous groups that has been removed in the same chain. This can lead to very high points in a long chain.

For example, if the first group removed contains six beads you get 7 points. If this removal leads to a second group of six being removed, you are rewarded points for this second group as if it was a group of seven (i.e. 9 points). If the removal of the second group leads to a third group of six being removed, you are rewarded points for this third group as if it was a group of eight (i.e. 13 points) etc.

The score is also multiplied with 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 behaviour and is essential to success in Beads. You earn a bomb when a group of eight or more beads is removed. There are three 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. Note that you can never have more than one bomb at a time so in order to get a new bomb you must first use your current one.

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. This new color might be the same color as the beads previously had, in which case nothing happens except that the bomb itself changes color.

Game modes

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

Easy

Easy mode is exactly the same as Normal mode (see below), except that you only need to arrange the beads in groups of four to remove them. In all other game modes you need to create groups of five.

Normal

In normal mode you have unlimited 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. Everytime 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.

Time trial

In Time trial mode you have an unlimited number of beads at your disposal. What you do not have is an unlimited amount of time. You get 45 seconds to start with, but for each group of beads that is removed you get a small amount of extra time, more time the bigger the group is, but less for higher levels. You can keep track of the time left in the progress bar at the left of the screen. When time runs out, the game is over.

60 sec

60 sec mode is exactly what it sounds like; You have 60 seconds to get as many points as possible. You have an unlimited amount of beads at your disposal, but when the minute is up the game is over.

Enjoy Beads!