I've been meaning to write about this little gem for a while. I found it in the iPhone app store a few weeks ago while I was looking for matching games. Like Bejeweled, the mechanic is to match 3 of the same kind of gems on the board. Unlike Bejeweled, however, that's not the goal of the game. The goal is to get the little monsters to their exits. Each monster eats gems of its own color to progress across the board. A level doesn't end until all your monsters are out. There are also several different power-ups that affect the board.

The monsters themselves are just square little guys with big eyes and funny mouths. They don't look like much in a still image:

But they're really quite cute and charming once they get moving. When two or more monsters are side by side, they'll start dancing. If a monster hasn't moved in a while, it gets bored and falls asleep. (zZz)

I downloaded the free version (Gemmed! Lite) first. The lite version has just 6 levels; the full version has 50. This seems to be a common trend for lite vs. full games on the app store. I ran through all the levels of the lite version in less than 20 minutes, and went ahead and bought the full version right then.

I've been playing the game a little every day since I bought it, even though I've completed the 50-level run a few times. The cuteness of the monsters is compelling. :) And the more I play, the more I appreciate some of the developer's choices and attention to detail. For example, if you're stuck on a level for a while, the game will automatically help you out, so you can finish the level rather than quitting the game in frustration. And if you run out of moves, you can retry the level, rather than having to start over from scratch.

Gemmed! is a really cute match-3 game; if you like games like Bejeweled, I definitely recommend checking it out.