Color Lines

Color Lines (1992), created by the Russian development studio Gamos Ltd., is a historically monumental puzzle game. While it might look like a simple board game today, Color Lines (often referred to simply as Lines) invented a brand-new mechanical sub-genre. It serves as a direct structural ancestor to modern "match" puzzle games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga. It was an absolute phenomenon across Eastern Europe and the global shareware scene in the early 90s.
The gameplay takes place on a simple 9 x 9 grid. The concept is incredibly straightforward, but mastering it requires thinking several turns ahead:
- You must arrange colored balls into continuous straight lines—horizontally, vertically, or diagonally—of five or more balls of the matching color.
- When you successfully form a line of 5, those balls pop and vanish from the board, granting you score points. If you manage to link 6, 7, or more in a single line, your score multiplier dramatically increases.
- Every time you move a single ball without successfully completing a line, three new random colored balls drop onto the board. A small "Next" preview window at the top of the screen warns you which colors are arriving next, but not exactly where they will land.
- You can select any ball and move it to any open tile on the board, but only if there is an unblocked orthogonal path (up, down, left, right) available for it to slide through. If other balls completely wall off a section, you cannot reach it.
- The game naturally ends when the grid fills up entirely and no more valid moves can be made.

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