One More Gem is an enjoyable Boulder Dash-like game, in a level by level basis in a action puzzle square tile-based environment of digging through dirt to find gems, and dealing with obstacles such as falling objects and enemies. Unlike other games I played and reviewed, this is the first time I outright bought the game from the new Steam game releases section, because there were so few of these kinds of games within the past 5 years, free or paid. I wishlisted countless Steam games and checked the new game releases every couple or few days roughly, but this one, I felt I had to buy it since puzzle games don't tend to sell as much [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/505400/eventcomments/1633040337753435367/?tscn=1760293710#c600792156684265941]if at least based on talking to the developer of Rake in Grass on Diamond Joyce and the Secret of Crystal Cave[/url].
From my past around 20 years of playing these types of games, there's a mix of game elements I'm familiar with that I seen in similar games that I played through that I observed:
Sokoban:[list][*]Head statues that can be pushed onto circle pads to open doors[/list]
Boulder Dash:[list][*]Weak walls that fallable objects will roll off from
[*]Magic walls that reveal themselves when rocks or gems fall into it and swap each other's properties[/list]
Emerald Mine:[list][*]Orange fallable bombs
[*]Blue bomb dynamite
[*]Green acid that anything going in can disappear generally[/list]
Supaplex:[list][*]One-way, horizontal, vertical, and four-way wooden pipes
[*]Yellow pumpkin bombs that can be remotely exploded by beehives
[*]Mouth traps reveal from dirt that harm players going into it
[*]Explosions that harm players going into it
[*]Fallable objects that roll halfway but are stopped by the player[/list]
These elements are a nice mixing pot to see them interact together and have their own spin that makes it more of their own with some distinct differences enough. Notably, there's enough new elements that stand out that I haven't seen in other Boulder Dash-like games I played, the biggest being those special eggs that are opened up by explosions that reveal long creatures that have their own special abilities and quirks.
Previously, there's 2 flaws that would've somewhat made it a harder recommendation in that some game objects are odd in bits and pieces, as I mentioned some of the issues on the Steam forums such as [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/3871180/discussions/0/695374430750117078/]the gravity inconsistency of pushing orange pumpkin bombs[/url], as these were encountered during normal gameplay, not only through custom levels. The other flaw are the Steam achievements either being improperly given, or didn't gave them when they were supposed to. I got a bit worried my messages in the Steam forum of One More Gem would not get read and responded to, based on my limited experience on posting in the Steam forums like [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/2539560/discussions/0/597386372524845297/]Fill Multicolor[/url] (the dev responded almost a year later), and braved myself to join their Discord server to get their attention, which turns out they got a job recently, explaining unable to respond in the Steam forums regularly, sigh, the life of an indie dev. While the Steam achievement issues are fixed, for the odd object interactions, the dev plans to fix them in the future, but cannot guarantee when due to potentially having to overhaul the backend of the system.
The big question mark is the object interactions that are only found in the level editor that can cause unintended effects that haven't been considered or tested before. During streaming on their Discord server, I found a few object interactions that the dev didn't realize, which was really fun to see their reactions, but also bugs that wouldn't be found normally in the 7 levelsets, as I do want them fixed so there's object interaction consistency.
I enjoyed One More Gem overall, it got further enhanced from me interacting with the developer more directly, as I'm currently working on around a levelset of 20 levels on utilzing acid, because the dev says it's their least favorite object in the game, and I took that as a challenge. I do want to see this game succeed, and thus this Steam user review was made.
[table]
[tr][th]GOAL[/th]
[td]Collect required gems in each level while dealing with various obstacles and enemies.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]EXPERIENCE[/th]
[td]About 2 decades worth of experience playing Boulder Dash-like games.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]SETUP[/th]
[td]Fullscreen, default game speed, and switching between Moss and Pebla in each chapter finished for fun.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]CONTENT[/th]
[td]7 levelsets, 1st levelset with 10 levels, and 2nd through 7th levelset with 20 levels, altogether there's 130 levels.
There's Steam Workshop support that provides usermade individual levels and levelsets from those that desire making content.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]BOUGHT[/th]
[td]2025 December 23 for a full 15.99$, about 3 days after the game release date of 2025 December 20, which occurred during the 2025 Steam Winter Sale that started on 2025 December 18.
[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]ENDGAME[/th]
[td]If not earning 3 stars from all levels, earning Steam achievements that require playing levels differently that isn't part of earning 3 stars.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]PLAYTIME[/th]
[td][b]781 minutes, or 13.025 hours on campaign[/b][list]
[*]Gem School, Tree Crab Forest, Vampire Bat Grotto, Venom Spider Cave, Hard Shell Snail Den, Angry Fruit Vulcano, and Golden Plains Pleateu: 10, 55, 80, 231, 139.5, 133, and 133 minutes.[/list]
[b]60 minutes on earning remaining Steam achievements[/b][list]
[*]Loopy, Pacifist, Fighter elite, Special delivery, Bug collector, Silent cave, Sky strike, Ignore them, and Spider lover: 29 minutes.
[*]Old school, Tree Crab Forest collector, Cave explorer, Berserk, Assasin, and Angry Fruit Vulcano collector: 41 minutes.[/list]
[b]841 minutes, or 14.016 hours completing the game[/b]
Playstyle consists of no rewind use to earn the specific no rewind star, to ensure 3 stars per level.[/td][/tr][/table]
[h3]MY POSITIVES[/h3]
[list][*][b][u]The atmosphere from 3D object visual art and the music is enjoyable to immerse myself in;[/u][/b] the animations from the levelset selection are lovely, being able to appreciate them up close on first sight.[/list]
[h3]MY NEGATIVES[/h3]
[list][*][b][u]Rewinding may hinder more than help in that certain objects don't rewind correctly or act differently;[/u][/b] for non-experienced players likely using this, certain objects like the yellow detonation bomb and beehive interaction don't rewind back correctly, which require level restarting.
[*][b][u]It's difficult to distinguish ores from gems due to looking too similar to each other;[/u][/b] most obvious in level 8 in 'Venom Spider Cave' where I had to open the ores to reveal gems with boulders, but I have to go through the level in a way that I have to open the ores, but also not have them unreachable, and not have myself stuck from level finishing. The dev plans to fix this in the future to make it more distinct.[/list]
[h3]MY EEHS/NEUTRAL FEELINGS[/h3]
[list][*][b][u]Game logic is more asynchronous than deterministic, which timing may be more inconsistent[/u][/b]; it's tricky because I played both types from these type of games but overall doesn't mind them, I just have more of an issue if trying to do something during a level, but sometimes you're not able to do that, being doubtful or whether it's a bug or just timing inconsistency. This extends on making custom levels, which I made the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660738365]one-off level 'Crab Totem Delivery' and uploaded it onto the Steam Workshop[/url] as a one-off level despite best efforts for consistency but failed to do so, the dev plans to fix this by potentially overhauling how timing works, but can't guarantee any certainty at this time.[/list]
