What Does the Sweeping Light Mean in Bejeweled?

Bejeweled 3 Gameplay

• The basic gameplay of Bejeweled 3 is similar to previous versions. You start with a square board filled with rows of gems. The gems have seven possible colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and white. They are arranged randomly on the screen. You must select a gem and swap it with an adjacent gem to make a row of three or more matching gems. The gems behave as if gravity is drawing them downwards, so when you remove a row of gems, the gems above fall down to replace them and new gems drop from the top of the screen.

Game Modes

• Bejeweled 3 has four main gameplay modes -- Classic, Lightning, Quest and Zen. In the Quest mode you can play a series of mini games which reveal four unlockable modes: Poker, Ice Storm, Diamond Mine and Butterflies. Lightning, Ice Storm, Diamond Mine and some of the quest mode mini-games are timed -- you'll need to match gems as fast as you can, which requires a lot of concentration. Classic, Zen, Butterflies and Poker are untimed. While pondering your next move in the untimed games, you might notice some special light effects.

The Sweeping Light Effect

• The sweeping light is a ripple of light that travels across the game board from corner to corner. Unlike some of the other light effects, it doesn't have any special significance -- it's just there to draw your attention and make the game more visually interesting. It only appears if you haven't moved any gems for a long interval, so you're less likely to see it if you're playing one of the rapid timed games.

Other Light Effects

• If you match four gems together you will make a fire gem. When you match this flaming gem, it will explode in a ball of fire, destroying all the gems next to it. Matching five gems in an L- or T-shaped pattern creates a lightning gem, which throws off sparks. When you match this, it shoots lightning bolts along the row and column it is in, vaporizing all the gems in the lightning's path. If you match five gems in a row, you will make a hypercube. This is a spinning multicolored cube. When you match it, lightning bolts shoot across the game board, destroying all gems of a particular color. Different game modes have their own light effects -- for example, Poker sometimes displays a celebratory light show when you make a particularly successful match.