Macstones

MacStones is a Classic Mac port of Same Gnome, the popular Linux puzzle game, written by Craig Landrum of Blueridge Technologies and released as freeware. Despite the catalog tag of Boulder Dash variant, the game itself is a same-color matching puzzle: clear a grid of animated rotating balls by clicking groups of like-colored neighbors.

How it plays

The board fills with rotating colored balls. Click any group of two or more adjacent same-colored balls to remove them; remaining balls collapse down and shift to fill empty columns. Larger groups score exponentially more, rewarding patient play.

Score and bonuses

Eliminating every ball on the board awards a clear-screen bonus, turning each level into a planning puzzle rather than a click-fest. The high-score-chasing loop is the core hook the author calls out as habit-forming.

Make your own art

MacStones supports custom animation scenarios drawn in any Mac paint program, so players can swap the default balls for any artwork that fits the grid. This was a notable touch for a small freeware puzzler in 1999.

Compatibility

The release is a fat binary that runs natively on both 68K and PowerPC Macs, posted to Info-Mac by craigl@blueridge.com (Chief Technology Officer, Blueridge Technologies, Inc.).