Goldenbet

Goldenbet looks like an ordinary matching game and plays like a mining problem. Swap two neighbouring berries to line up three or more, and the run clears. What matters is where it clears.

Gold nuggets sit up in the seam. They never match, they cannot be swapped, and no tool will shift one sideways. The only thing that moves a nugget is empty space appearing underneath it. Every match you make below a nugget drops it exactly one row closer to the cart at the bottom of the shaft, and a nugget that reaches the cart is yours.

That single rule turns the usual instinct upside down. The gorgeous five in a row across the top of the board is worth almost nothing. A plain three in the one column that happens to sit under a nugget is worth the whole shaft. Cascades are wonderful when they run down the right column and a complete waste when they do not.

Two tools sit under the board and neither costs you a swing. The pick removes one single berry anywhere, which is often precisely the one square propping a nugget up. The blast clears an entire row at once, which is how you move two nuggets in the same breath.

Twenty shafts run down the mountain. Deeper shafts hide more nuggets, stack them further from the cart and add a sixth berry to the seam so the useful matches get rarer.

The assay office stamps your first nugget, your first double drop, your deepest cascade and your hundredth nugget overall, and a claims board keeps your best shaft score next to the other prospectors. All progress is stored on this device and one button in the settings clears it.

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