Tetris (1984) is the longest-running matching game and is one of the best selling video games of all time. Decades later, Bejeweled(2001) was released as a Flash game by PopCap Games for browsers growing the game genre. Finally, Candy Crush Saga (2012) was released by King for Facebook and popularized the match 3 genre to the broader internet.
Why Match 3 and Not Match 4
The underlying mechanic is tile-matching, so it is not limited to the number three. However, three tiles as a minimum is naturally easy for people to learn yet still rewarding to find combinations. Three is a significant number in many natural and artificial systems. Three points in geometry forms a triangle or a Pyramid. The Pyramid is an ancient structure created by our ancestors and the triangle is an important shape in elementary geometry. A polygon is another way to describe the triangle shape. In computer graphics, everything is a triangle. The polygon is a primitive triangle shape used to create all 3D models. Triangles are connected to create polygon meshes in 3d graphics. The more complex an object, the higher the polygon count required to accurately display a 3D model. The next play button you see will probably have a triangle. Pizza is a triangle. Need I say more about the number three?
