Jewel Thief Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Jewel Thief, a quick playing card game designed by bugbeast. Jewel Thief can be played either as a realtime game, or a turn based, match three type of game.

I’ve always enjoyed matching games, especially ones that bring up fond memories of video games like Bejeweled from the early 2000s. When this game appeared in our review options I knew I had to try it out!

Jewel Thief is a versatile card game for 2-4 players that takes about 30 minutes to play. The best experience is with 3 players to keep the gameplay short but engaging.

Jewel Thief comes with a deck of 36 cards that can be played in four rule variants. This review focuses on the main variant and a match-3 variant.

In the main variant, the jewel thief shuffles the deck and places every card face-up into a 6 by 6 grid while the treasure hunter closes their eyes. Once the jewel thief says “Go” the treasure hunter opens their eyes and takes two cards that match, repeating this until their turn ends. The catch is that during this time the jewel thief removes a row or column every 3 seconds, limiting the options for the treasure hunter. At the end of the turn, the treasure hunter receives 1 point for each match they took. The roles will then swap so the jewel thief can have a chance at being the treasure hunter, finishing the round. The player with the most points after 3 rounds wins.

In the match-3 variant, 16 cards are placed face-up into a 4 by 4 grid, with the remaining cards forming a deck. Each player draws 2 cards for their hand. In turn order, each player chooses a card from their hand to slide into the grid and push a card out of the grid. That card can be added to their hand or discarded, drawing back up to a 2-card hand. If this results in a group