Why a picnic basket?

Most match-three games share one small letdown. You line up three pieces, they vanish, and that’s the end of them. When we built our own version, I wanted every match to have a job. Here, the strawberries you line up fly up into a picnic basket at the top of the board.

The basket also gives each level a little story. You’re getting ready for a day out at the park, the beach, a garden or a hilltop, and the list on the basket says what to bring. The list wants 12 strawberries and 8 sandwiches, and you can see at a glance how many are still missing.

A bit of real match-three history

Swapping two neighbors to make a line of three goes back at least to Shariki, a 1994 game for MS-DOS by the Russian developer Eugene Alemzhin. The name is Russian for “the balls.” You swapped two balls that sat side by side to line up three or more of one color. They vanished, new balls dropped in from the top, and the game ended when no swap could make a line.

The game that made the idea famous came from PopCap Games, founded by Jason Kapalka, Brian Fiete and John Vechey. In the spring of 2000 they put a browser game called Diamond Mine online. It was soon renamed Bejeweled, and PopCap brought it out under that name in 2001. In 2020 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

One detail made us smile. Game Informer reported in 2011 that Kapalka’s first idea was to use fruit as the pieces, but there weren’t enough natural fruit colors to tell them apart. Gems had the same problem, so the team settled on simple shapes in different colors. We hit the same snag with picnic food. That’s why our six foods differ in shape as well as color.

What goes in the basket

• Six foods: strawberries, oranges, grapes, bananas, sandwiches and cupcakes. The Park uses the first five. Cupcakes join at the Beach.
• Picnic fork 🍴: line up 4, or make an L or T shape. Swap the fork to clear its whole row or column. The arrow shows which way.
• Sun hat 👒: line up 5 in a straight row. Swap it with a food, and every one of that food on the board goes into the basket.
• Ants 🐜: from level 14 at the Beach. An ant holds its food in place. Make a match that includes that food and the ant wanders off.
• Folded blankets: from the Garden on. They can’t be swapped. Make a match right next to one (corners count) or send a fork through it, and it gets packed too.

How to play

• Swipe a food into its neighbor, or tap one food and then the one next to it. With a mouse, click and drag.
• A swap only counts if it makes a line of three or more, or uses a fork or sun hat. If it doesn’t, the foods slide back and you keep your move.
• Pack everything on the basket list before the moves run out. The more moves you have left, the more stars you get.
• If no swap is possible, the board shuffles itself. Sit still for six seconds and two foods start to glow as a hint.
• Your stars and progress save on this device.
• Sound is on to start. Tap 🔊 to mute, or 🎵 for music.
• Earn 3 stickers in this game for your QuickBOP sticker book.

Tips

Read the list first. Only foods on the list count. A big line of bananas won’t help when the basket wants grapes.

Work near the bottom. A match low on the board makes everything above it fall, and the new pieces often line up by themselves. Those extra matches are free.

Point the sun hat at what you need. Swap it with the food that’s furthest behind on the list.

Free the ants early. A food with an ant on it can’t move, which blocks the swaps around it.

Your turn

The first list is short: ten strawberries for a day at the Park. Scroll up, tap Start and play.