Match. Blast. Survive.

Match-3 is one of the most competitive genres in mobile gaming. To build something worth playing, and worth noticing, you have to start with a sharp point of view on what makes the mechanic work, and then push it further than anyone else in the space.

The brief was to design a mobile game that felt genuinely competitive and socially alive, not just another grid of coloured tiles to tap through. The paranormal theme was the creative canvas. The real design problem was mechanical: what kind of Match-3 gives players the best combination of speed, unpredictability, and competitive tension?

The answer came from market data. An analysis by GameRefinery showed that between 2018 and 2020, games with collapse/blast mechanics had doubled in the top-grossing charts. The reason is rooted in cognition: the brain recognises patterns more easily with large blobs of colour in close proximity. Move predictability is higher, randomness is lower, and the time between moves is shorter. Collapse/blast is simply a faster, more satisfying loop than swap.

That became the foundation.

Ghost Hunt is built on the collapse/blast mechanic: swipe and match shapes and supernatural artefacts in vertical or horizontal patterns of three or more to blast the grid. The objective is to collect ghost skulls by clearing space from the grid and letting them travel to the bottom. The player who collects the most skulls within the time limit wins. Multiple power-ups are available to shift the tide mid-match.

The mechanic was chosen deliberately over the traditional swap model. Collapse/blast offers less randomness, faster move resolution, and more predictable power-up creation, all of which make 1v1 competitive play feel genuinely tense rather than luck-dependent.

The social layer is what makes Ghost Hunt different from every other game in the category. Live 1v1 multiplayer with integrated video chat turns every match into a face-to-face encounter. You’re not just competing against a score. You’re competing against a person who can see your reaction. That changes the psychology of play entirely.

The full UX was designed inside GamePe, a gaming platform built to give the product complete context, from discovery and onboarding through matchmaking and gameplay to post-match screens. Every screen, every state, every transition designed as part of a coherent product experience, not just a game UI in isolation.