While playing, you can listen to background music. CD player-like controls let you easily play, skip, pause and stop tracks.
Music files are supplied with the game, but can be easily replaced with any other MIDI files you like.

How to play

The gameplay is very easy. The playing field is filled with various object - geometrical figures, funny creatures, rails, etc. (the exact look depends on the theme chosen). The object of the game is to maximize your score by removing as many items from the playing field as possible.
As you move the mouse pointer over the items, connected groups of same items alter their appearence - start spinning, flashing, etc. Their behaviour also depends on the theme selected. All the spinning/flashing items will be removed when you click the mouse button.

If you play a Downward type game, then as items are removed, the upper ones will fall down to fill the space left. When you remove all items from a column, the items to the right will be pushed over to join with the remaining items.

For an Upward type game things are on the contrary - the items (light-weight stuff like ballons, kites and other) rise higher as the space above clears, and shift to the left when a column disappears.

A game of Assembly type is a bit more different. Here, you deal with items that can be connected to each other, such as rails, pipes, etc (the exact look depends on the theme), and remove connected groups that make solid path. The rules and the scoring system are the same.

The trick is to remove as many items in a single group as you can. The game rewards you for large amounts of items removed at once. Small groups cost less or even nothing. If possible, avoid removing groups of only two items, for it won't increase your score.

The game stops when there aren't any groups of 2 or more items of the same type left in the game, or when the playing field is completely cleared.

Configuring the game.

All game configurations, such as difficulty level, gaming area size, and theme can be set in the Options dialog.

When you select a theme, it loads the items, the background, their behavior and sounds.
For each theme, you can specify the board size - choose one of three standard sizes (small, medium and large).
You can choose a customs size as well - any size between 3*3 and 15*25 is available.

The difficulty level changes the number of different items in game. The more item types you have in play, the more difficult the game is.
For all game types, except Assembly type, the number of items can be set between 2(easy) and 5(hard).
In Assembly game, there's a set of 11 items. This number can't be changed.

The Scoring System

The scoring system is very simple.
The program first subtracts 2 from the number of items removed in a single click. It then squares the result and adds it to your score: (n-2)^2.
See the table:
 

Items removed	Points scored
2	0 (!)
3	1
4	4
5	9
6	16
7	25
8	36
9	49
10	64
...	...

As you can see, when you remove a group of two items, no points are added to you score, and when the removed group is large, the score increases considerably. Each time you move the pointer over a group of items, the status window at the bottom of the screen displays the points you'll get if you remove the group. The same window also displays current score and the number of remaining items.

If you manage to clear all the items from the playing field, the game rewards you with a 1000 point bonus!

High scores

Each of the combination of game type, size and number of items has its own high score table.
There are tables for Downward game, Small size, 2 items; ... 3 items; 4 items; 5 items; Downward game, Medium size, ...
Upward game, Small size,... etc.
The total amount of tables is 27.
Note, that user-defined (non-standard) board sizes don't figure in the high scores.

In the game, you can see the highscores for the current game type/size/difficulty by clicking Scores button.
Besides, when you end a game with a result, that enters the highscore, the table appears showing your new record. Don't forget to input your name when the program asks it. It's important in case you decide to post your result to our Worldwide Highscore Tables.

Worldwide Highscore Contest

Our Worldwide Highscore Contest gives you the unique oportunity of competing with other players. Right from the game you can submit your best results to our site, where they will be automatically included into our Highscore Tables.
There are score lists for each game type (Downward, Upward and Assembly), game size (Small, Medium, Large) and difficulty level (2,3,4,5 items, except for Assembly type game, where number of items is fixed) - 27 tables in sum.

Submitting your results is easy: click  button at the bottom of the screen. The program launches your default Windows mail client, displaying the message with your results. Send it as you usually send mail. The program posts your highest result for each type of game, board size and difficulty level.

Right from the game you can go to Aha!Game site and see the Wordwide Highscore Tables. To do this, click that large AHA! button on the left of the screen, to launch your default Internet browser and visit the site.