Match Masters

What the game is

Competitive match-3 is a small niche, and Candivore's entry is the one most people have heard of. Two opponents trade turns on a single shared board, so every match you make changes the board the other player gets next.

Booster charging is the core system. Blue stars charge yours, red circles charge theirs, and a fully charged Booster is the swing that decides most rounds. There are more than twenty to choose from, and picking the right one for the moment is most of the skill.

How a session plays

A match takes a few minutes. You make a move, watch the opponent make theirs, and plan around what they've left. The temptation is to grab the biggest cascade available, but setting up a board that gives nothing away is often the smarter play.

Between matches there are tournaments to enter, trophies to earn and new studios to open. Sticker albums fill in on the side and pay out cosmetic rewards when completed. Facebook linking lets you challenge specific friends rather than strangers.

Why people look for it

The appeal is a friend to beat. Most match-3 games are solitary, and this is one of the few where a rival's moves actually matter to yours. People search for it after being challenged, or because they want their familiar puzzle habit to come with a scoreboard attached. The large Booster list keeps the strategy from going stale.

Look and feel

Bold, saturated and busy, as the genre demands. The App Store listing shows five screenshots, which likely cover the duel view and the studio and sticker screens. Expect plenty of animation when Boosters fire and a lot of UI around the board for trophies, events and leaderboards, since nearly everything in the game is a live competition of some sort.

Updates and upkeep

A 4.7 rating across more than a hundred thousand reviews signals a game that has held its audience. Candivore LTD maintains rotating events and leaderboards, which only work if someone is actively running them, so this is not an abandoned project. Only the App Store link is present here; there's no version string to judge update timing.

Good for

• Rivalry-driven puzzling

  The shared board turns a solo habit into something you can actually win against another person.

• Facebook friend challenges

  Linking an account lets you pick your opponent instead of taking whoever the matchmaker serves up.

• Booster collectors

  With more than twenty Boosters, there's a long tail of earning and experimenting to do.

Before you install

Rated 4+ and free to download. Because every game is live against another person, a connection is mandatory and there's no offline fallback. Facebook sign-in is optional but needed for direct friend challenges. The listing doesn't state what the in-app purchases cover, how heavy the ads are, or how much storage the download takes.