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This week: Destruct-O-Match
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Ah, yes. Blowing up buildings. What more could you look for in a game?
At its most basic, Destruct-O-Match is a game that allows you to pick a group
of blocks that are touching on at least one side (no diagonals) and destroy
them. The rest of the blocks above those then drop straight down, and you repeat
this until they're all gone.
Of course, Grand Master discussions invariably circle around scoring, so let's
talk about that first. The rankings go like this:
0 Beginner
100 Amateur
200 Novice
300 Expert
500 Master
750 Grand Master
There are two main goals to get a good score in this game. First of all, try
to get as large a mass of a single colour as you can before you blow them up.
You can get a lot of points if you can get most of one colour together at once.
But you must advance to the next level or the game is over.
You can get to the second level by getting a score of at least 125 on the first,
but that's not nearly enough to make Grand Master.
If you actually clear the whole board, you get an extra 500 points, and can
even make enough to advance through the next level without playing it (not that
you would). Clearing the board is the strategy we'll discuss here, because if
you can clear the first board, you'll find it hard not to make a Grand Master
score.
Playing through once while writing this article, I had 163 and completely cleared
the first board. With the 500 bonus, that gave me 663, and I was only 87 away
from a Grand Master score and just starting board 2. In fact, the "next level"
button was already showing, indicating that I could advance to level 3 immediately.
Advancement comes:
Level 1 to 2 at 125 points
Level 2 to 3 at 375 points
Level 3 to 4 at 700 points (and Grand Master at 750)
There are only 4 levels.
There are a couple of things that are fatal to any attempt to clear the whole
board. One of these is ending up with a single block of any colour. You have
to have at least a pair to get rid of them, so be especially careful not only
to keep 2 or more to the end, but keep them in the same area of the board.
It's usually good to work from the top down, clearing blocks that are connected
in a single horizontal line first. If there's a stack of blocks vertically,
there's nothing you can do to disrupt them by blowing up blocks below them.
However, if you blow up an uneven batch of blocks and have a horizontal row
above them, it can break those up to where you can no longer destroy them.
At the very end, the last few blocks of a colour may well end up separated from
each other, and they might just as well never have been saved. Pay close attention
to how the stacks slide together as they are emptied, and try to get them matched
up horizontally as well as you can.
It can be very important to determine the order in which to remove the blocks,
as you can inadvertently connect ones you didn't mean to, and that's about as
bad as not getting some to touch that you do want together.
One thing you want to try to do is to clear level one, where you only have
orange, gold, green and purple blocks. As you progress through the levels, you
get more different colours on the board at the same time, and that makes it much
harder.
So, clear level one. If you don't clear it, just restart. It's hardly worth
the attempt if you don't get that big 500 bonus. You'll be a Grand Master on
the next board.
Yes, you can try to beat the high score too (4861 at this writing) but that's
a really impressive score and I'm happy just chalking up another "Grand Master"
in my scores list. I know my limitations...
Next: Neggsweeper Articles so far in the series: Nimmo's
Pond, Pyramids,
Swarm!,
Scarab
21, Pterattack!,
Sakhmet
Solitaire and Chute
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Docktor is Grand Master of Destruct-O-Match and several other games. He holds
the Grand Master position in the new "Game Strategies Guild" where strategies
such as presented in this article are discussed among the members.
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