Same Game Strategy: Build Big Groups for Big Scores

Updated October 2026

Same Game looks like a relaxed tapping toy: a ten-by-twelve wall of coloured blocks, tap a cluster, watch it vanish. Underneath, it is one of the purest planning puzzles on the site, because the score formula punishes casual play and rewards patience far more than most players expect. This guide walks through exactly how points are calculated, how the board rearranges itself after every clear, and the habits that separate a 200-point game from one that scores many times that.

How the board works

The board holds 120 blocks, ten columns by twelve rows, and each block is assigned one of five colours completely at random when the game starts. A group is any set of two or more same-coloured blocks joined by their edges; corners touching do not count. A single block with no matching neighbour cannot be removed by itself.

Clearing works in two taps. The first tap highlights the group and shows its value in the message bar, and the second tap on the same group removes it. You can preview as many groups as you like before committing, and a tap on an empty square or a lone block simply cancels the preview. There is no undo, so use the preview freely; it costs nothing.

After a clear, gravity acts inside each column: blocks above the gap fall straight down. Any column that ends up completely empty is removed, and everything to its right shifts one column to the left. The board therefore always packs itself towards the bottom-left corner. The game ends automatically when no group of two or more remains anywhere.

The scoring formula, and why it changes everything

A group of n blocks is worth n × (n − 1) points. That grows roughly with the square of the group size, which is the single most important fact in the game. A pair earns 2, a group of five earns 20, eight earns 56, twelve earns 132 and fifteen earns 210. Look at what that means in practice: two separate groups of eight are worth 112 together, but if they had been joined into one group of sixteen they would have paid 240. Combining is worth more than doubling.

On top of that, emptying the whole board adds a flat 1,000 points. To match that from a single group you would need 33 blocks in one colour. Leftover blocks at the end do not cost anything, so the only penalty for a messy finish is the bonus you missed.

The practical lesson is simple: almost every small clear is a small loss. Each time you remove a pair or a trio, you take blocks out of circulation that might later have been part of a much bigger, much more valuable group. A strong game usually consists of many modest clears made with a purpose, followed by a few very large ones.

Choosing what to build

Before your first tap, take a few seconds to look at the board as a whole. Because colours are dealt at random, they are never perfectly even, and one colour usually has noticeably more blocks than the others. That colour is your natural target for a giant group at the end. Count roughly, or simply look for the colour that seems to dominate the bottom half, since the bottom is where everything eventually ends up.

Once you have a target colour, stop treating it as something to clear and start treating it as something to gather. Every other colour becomes a tool: you clear those groups specifically to make target blocks fall onto or slide beside each other. A good test before each tap is to ask whether this clear brings two pieces of the target colour closer together. If the answer is no and the group is small, it can usually wait.

Using gravity and column shifts on purpose

Where you clear inside a column matters as much as which group you clear. Removing something near the top of a column only drops a handful of blocks a short distance, which leaves the rest of the board untouched. Removing something near the bottom drops the entire column above it, which can create several new contacts at once but can also break apart a structure you were building. Use top clears for fine adjustments and bottom clears when you want a big reshuffle.

Column removal is the only way blocks move sideways. When you empty a whole column, every column to its right slides over by one, which can bring two halves of the board into contact for the first time. Watch for nearly empty columns in the middle of the board: finishing one off can be the move that lets your target colour finally join up across the gap. Because everything packs to the left, the right side of the board is where large sideways movements tend to happen as the game goes on.

The endgame and the clear-board bonus

As the board thins out, start thinking about the bonus. The key rule is that a colour with exactly one block left can never be cleared, so the bonus is lost the instant any colour drops to a single survivor. Before every clear in the late game, check what the remaining counts will be. Leaving three of a colour is safe; leaving one is fatal to the bonus.

Not every board can be emptied, since the starting deal is random and is not checked for solvability. If you have built a huge group and the bonus already looks impossible, cash in the big group and accept the result. If the bonus still looks reachable, it is usually worth more than squeezing extra size out of any one group, so play the final dozen moves slowly and preview every option.

Common mistakes

• Popping whatever is biggest right now. The largest group on a fresh board is rarely large. Taking it immediately often scatters the blocks that would have merged into something better.
• Clearing the target colour early. Each small clear of your chosen colour shrinks the final payout by far more than the points it earns.
• Ignoring the right side. Column shifts move blocks leftwards, so what happens on the right decides which blocks will meet later.
• Forgetting the counts near the end. One stray block of any colour ends the hope of the bonus.

A practice plan

1. Play one game where you never clear anything smaller than four blocks unless no other move exists. Notice how much higher the final score is.
2. Play a game where you pick a target colour at the start and refuse to touch it until it forms one large mass.
3. Use the preview on every move for a whole game, comparing two or three options before committing.
4. Finally, practise the endgame: from about thirty blocks left, count each colour before every tap and try to leave none stranded.

Same Game rewards the player who sees the board as a single connected system rather than a set of separate clusters. Slow down, build on purpose, and let the square in the scoring formula work for you.