The game really opens up when the player gets characters that have skills that match each other. By gathering enough mana by matching the colour the character needs, a skill is unlocked for one-time use. However, the colours of the gems do matter, because your characters need mana to use their abilities that deal damage or modify the game board. The goal is to eliminate the enemy team by matching skulls matching 5 skulls gives the player a critical hit, while matching 4 of anything gives the player an extra turn. In one team, the player can have 4 characters, including or excluding the hero, and so does the opponent. The player controls a team of characters and can create a hero at the start of the game. The basic idea is to match 3 gems of the same colour by swapping the place of two adjacent gems vertically or horizontally. Luckily there is a great tutorial that explains all of the necessary mechanics. The free-to-play Gems of War introduces a fantasy setting and RPG elements to the genre, so much so that the player might feel confused at the start of the game.
The basic game idea is old: the first game with exactly this mechanic might have been Shariki (1994), created by Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin. Developer Infinite Interactive has a brilliant new take on match three games.
