Some time towards the end of 1986, I found an Apple Mac emulator for my Amiga called "ShapeShifter." Whilst playing around with it, I stumbled across a program called "SameGame." It was an interesting little puzzle game, not like anything I'd played before, and strangely addictive.

A couple of days later I decided it was time the Amiga had a game like SameGame, and so Tile Fall was created. The original Amiga version of Tile Fall was written entirely in about 50 minutes, and was extremely basic -- but it provided the foundation for all the other versions of Tile Fall that have followed.

I kept the basic scoring and rules that were used by SameGame, but added a rather more rigid structure to the game, with fixed board sizes and various numbers of different tiles available. Personally I think this makes Tile Fall much more interesting than the original SameGame, but no doubt that is a matter of opinion.

Tile Fall continued to be developed on the Amiga for a number of months, and the final version was released in February 1997.

In the summer of 1997 I bought myself a Psion 3c computer, after having had my eye on one for a couple of years. I was impressed with the built-in OPL programming language and decided to try to write something using it. After various test programs, I decided it was time to write a proper program -- and Tile Fall seemed like the ideal thing to write.

Finally, a pocket version of Tile Fall was complete. The 16-bit Psion version of Tile Fall (compatible with the Psion 3a, 3c, 3mx and Siena) is unfortunately still the most basic of all the versions available, but it did manage to share exactly the same highscore file format as used by the Amiga version, meaning that you could merge all your best scores into the Amiga if you'd been playing the game whilst out and about.

Not long after this, I finally admitted defeat and bought myself a PC. Something I had been planning to do for a long time was to learn C++, so after buying Visual Studio and a number of books on MFC I sat down to achieve that goal. And of course, Tile Fall was the ideal program to write! So the third version of Tile Fall was created.

Once more, this shared the same highscore file format as the Amiga and Psion versions, so highscores could be copied and merged between all three platforms.

The Windows version of the game is fairly basic, but it does have the "extended" tilesets (where the tiles join together with the other tiles of the same type that they touch) and highscore merging, which was previously only available on the Amiga version.

The most recent variant of the Tile Fall series is that for the EPOC platform. Originally, this consisted only of the Psion5, but the number of computers running the new 32-bit operating system has grown enormously, and now includes the GeoFox One, Psion 5mx, Revo and RevoPlus, Oregon Osaris, Ericsson MC218, Psion7 and netBook (these latter two in colour, too). Tile Fall has been modified to work on all of these different computers, and will take advantage of a colour screen if one is available.

The EPOC version of the game is by far the most fully-featured of any of the versions of Tile Fall. It naturally has highscore merging (and shares the same highscore file format as all the other versions). Additional features include "plug-in" tileset graphics (with a number of extra sets available to download) and Tournament Mode (allowing a set number of game boards to be replayed for competition or self-improvement). This version is also available in a number of languages: English, French, German, Italian and Dutch.

Well, just let it be said that this is not the end of the Tile Fall story. Another chapter is under development, and you know where you'll find out about it first... Keep an eye on TileFall.com!