Shariki

Shariki
Game screen. The Russian счет (sčot) means "score," while the green text at the bottom translates as "Program "Shariki". Author Zhenya Alemzhin. Write letters: [email protected]. Hello everyone!"
Developer(s)	Eugene "Zhenya" Alemzhin
Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Windows
Release	1994
Genre(s)	Puzzle
Mode(s)	Single-player

Shariki (Russian: Ша́рики, "The Marbles") is a puzzle video game written in 1994 for MS-DOS by Russian developer Eugene Alemzhin. The goal of the game is to gain progressively higher scores by matching three or more balls of the same color in a line (vertical or horizontal), by swapping adjacent balls. Each swap must result in a match. Matched balls are then removed, and new ones drop from the top to fill the gaps. The game is over when no more matches are possible in the game field.

Shariki proved to be influential and eventually many games that closely matched its mechanics arose.^[1] Collectively known as tile-matching video games or match-three games, these all revolve around the mechanic of creating a three-in-a-row line of identical pieces. They include:

• Bejeweled (2001) by PopCap Games
• Jewel Quest (2004) created and published by iWin
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (2007) developed by Infinite Interactive and published by D3 Publisher
• Aurora Feint (2008) game for the iPhone and iPod Touch
• Candy Crush Saga (2012)
• Pokémon Shuffle (2015) game for the Nintendo 3DS handheld console

• Article Shariki: The Predecessor of Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest^{[permanent dead link]}
• Museum of Shariki games (in Russian)
• Play Shariki at the Internet Archive

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