Long before any humans came to Skill City the mountain dwarves captured a vicious monster and imprisoned it deep in the mines. They used the monsters rage for all kinds of useful things like scaring children in to behaving well, garbage disposal, and noisy yet anonymous consumption of inconvenient business partners.

When the game of Mega Gem Battle was first created it was played elsewhere in the mines, but soon the dwarves realized that if they played it by the monster it had a calming effect on the beast. They at first thought he enjoyed watching the pretty gems get smashed to bits, but then they quickly realized that it was, in fact, the consumption of the loser that pleased the creature the most.

Now it's your turn to play the game! Fight your opponent by clearing gems from your mine and sending timer gems in to theirs. You can play single player against the clock to get a high score, or you can play multiplayer and try to eliminate your opponent before the time is up.

A pair of gems will fall from the top of your field, the next pair to fall is shown near your field so that you can plan ahead. As the gems fall you can move them left and right, push them down faster, and rotate them using the Z and X keys (or spacebar) and the arrow keys on your keyboard. Press the UP arrow to drop a gem instantly.

Use the circular Shatter Gems to destroy gems on your screen by placing them on, or next to, a gem of their same color. When they touch, the Shatter Gem will cause any gem of its color that touches it to explode! The power of your Shatter Gems will travel to all gems of its color, in a straight line up or down, making it possible to blow up many different gems on the screen as long as they are all connected and they are the same color. Diagonals don't count.

If you place gems of the same color together in a square or rectangle pattern they will merge together and form a single larger Mega Gem. You can build Mega Gems as large as you want, but it's tricky, so watch out! If you shatter a Mega Gem you get a big bonus to your points, and your attack if you are in Multiplayer mode.

Watch for the Rainbow Gem. It will explode every gem on the screen that is the same color of the gem beneath it when it lands. It doesn't affect gems next to it, only under it, so don't drop it on the floor or nothing will happen!

When you shatter gems underneath others, the ones on top will fall down because there is now nothing under them! Sometimes this will cause gems to fall down and make Mega Gems, or unmake a Mega Gem you have created. Sometimes you can place a shatter gem on your field next to colors that it won't shatter. Later you can set off a shatter that causes it to fall next to a gem that it will shatter, and you have just done two attacks in one move! Thats called a COMBO and you get a big bonus for that. You can combo many times for huge points and attacks. Sounds complicated? Don't worry! It's really easy to do!

The more gems you shatter, the more Attack Gems you send to your opponent. When Attack Gems fall they will count down and become normal gems when they reach 0. Until then they can be shattered, but they will not allow the shatter to travel to other nearby gems of the same color. They are annoying! If you want to prevent a large number of Attack Gems from falling, you can counter-attack. This will decrease the number of gems about to fall on you, but be careful, you only have one move to counter attack! After your one move, the gems will fall on you.

During play your gems fall in the 4th column. If you fill up any other column to the top, you will not end your game. If you fill the 4th column, that would prevent new gems from coming down, and your game is over. This might also result in getting eaten by a giant ageless monster trapped behind a huge magical gate, so try to avoid that.

At the end of 3 minutes, a winner will be chosen based on score if both players make it through the entire round.

it's important to note that your opponents display is shown a few seconds behind to allow for network lag, and to prevent cheating.