This is a game inspired by the popular ‘Candy Crush’ which in turn was inspired by ‘Bejeweled’. A player moves objects on the screen to make a match of three or more, eliminating those from the board and replacing them with new ones, which could potentially create further matches. We used photos of the objects the students had created based on those they had studied in a Museum.

iMuse included this game in a webapp created for the Ure Museum. Being allowed to play the game was one of the rewards for matching objects to their correct museum cases, but the game can be played standalone.

It has also been adapted as part of the charity RG Spaces’ Christmas card, where it elicited this comment from a recipient ‘Grrr, it’s completely addictive’. Whether or not your heritage site wishes to create such an addiction in your visitors is for you (and your ethics committee) to decide, but it does give a fairly simple way of introducing a small set of museum objects to the visitor.

Techie stuff – the basic logic was found in a tutorial on using CSS to create games. You can see (and download if required) the source by going to the above site, right clicking and viewing source. iMuse is contemplating setting up the system so a visitor can create their own crush game with their own pictures of objects. This could then form the basis of an on-site activity, for example by each member of a group choosing an object to be included in the group’s crush game.