My game is called Polymer. Let me explain why.

According to Wikipedia, “A polymer is a large molecule composed of repeating structural units.” Here is a picture of real polymers:

In the game, the goal is to form strands of connected units. This isn’t a match-3 game though. The units can only be connected in particular ways according to their rotations. Each unit’s rotation is chosen randomly, so you never know exactly what you’re going to be able to make. A molecular polymer’s sub-units “are typically connected by covalent chemical bonds.” In my game, each unit has a dark half-circle on all sides that need to be connected to something else to form a true bond. When a bond is found, the half-circle disappears.

To put it simply, finding matches in my game is a lot like the gameplay in the board game Carcassonne. In Carcassonne, there are many ways to match tiles together, but they only connect in certain locations. By the end of the game, you have a pretty cool looking city with procedurally generated castles, fields, roads, and rivers. I wanted to emulate this gameplay style because I’ve never really seen it done before in a matching game and I’m insanely bored of regular match-3 games.

As I said above, at the end of a game of Carcassonne, you have created a pretty cool looking city. Similarly, Polymer saves your best creation during a game so that you can revel in your molecule-forming abilities, or show off to friends. Plus, you’ll be able to Tweet your creations from within the app. Here are some Polymers I’ve made so far, from fairly simple to crazy complex (obviously, the bigger the Polymer, the more points it’s worth):

Thanks for reading (and special thanks to my wife Dana for coming up with the name)! Expect more soon.