Jewel Match Aquascapes 2 Collector’s Edition – Useful Tips and Tricks

Lesser-known tips and tricks.

Tips and Tricks

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Customization

• There isn’t just the options screen which you can access from either the main screen or the gears button on the right side of the levels, but if you go to the CE extras section, the Customization section lets you select from other custom cursors, change the tile set, and edit which tracks play in the music.
• As in the previous Jewel Match release, you can disable Magic Arrows, but it’s been my experience you still can’t completely hardcore-mode this game either. If you’re playing in extreme difficulty, you’ll need those arrows.

Playing Tips

• The latest tweak to the mechanics is the crabs can now be dragged to a wall or hole in the playfield if the crab is only 1 space away from the wall/hole to collect it.
• If you have the small hammer and use it on a wild gem, it causes an explosion clearing a 3×3 area. This trick works in nearly every Jewel Match game I’ve played except for maybe the very early ones from 12 or more years ago. However, this trick does NOT work if you use the medium or large hammer on the wild gem, so use your hammer wisely!
• Magic Arrows go through those annoying red walls, so make getting amulets, keys, coin bags, and crabs behind walls considerably easier if you can align the arrows properly. If nothing else, the holes created will give you better piece flow. You still get the random fireworks taking out random tiles in the board too. Earlier JM games would only give you the fireworks.
• If there’s an empty area with no playing tiles in it, you either have to shift gravity by using the compass(es) in the room, or else there are locks at the top of the room which you have to find the key. Keys are not always in the same room as their locks.
• A regularly used element in the whole JM series is to have piece shields blocking scroll arrows or spots in a room and the pieces required for the shield to be in a completely different room, so use all the scroll arrows you can.
• The netted pieces are powerups in disguise. Because you can move them anywhere without needing a match, dragging them around will reposition other things next to them, which can be used to great advantage for getting amulets, etc. with little effort.
• In the pearl room levels, there are now a lot more octopuses. Many of them hide under the safe tiles or wood boxes, so if you are the sort which has to “do everything”, make sure you clear out the wood and safe tiles. Collecting all the octopuses gets you the Steam Achievements about number of pearls collected relatively easy, because the extra pearls from the octopuses now count towards the total tally.
• The small hammer can be used to collect an octopus or coin bag.

Steam Achievements

Most of the Steam achievements are the “play long enough” sort or self explanatory, but a few quirks I came across:

1. Stylish Jack is still ridiculously easy to get. Even if you hate custom cursors as I do, all you have to do is turn on the custom cursor in the options and then shut it back off.
2. I don’t know if the speed match achievements (Quick Click, Keen Eye, Supersonic Mouse) can still be obtained with the “wiggle a fishnet piece around” trick someone hit upon in the last JM game. If you want to try for these legitimately, I found the easiest opportunity comes in the starting room of level 2. Don’t click on coins, Magic Arrows, or miss a move while cranking it out and don’t use the hammer either.
3. The “finish the first 120 levels with a perfect” will not pop unless you go back to the standard map after the credits scene rolls and the CE map has unlocked. I am guessing the “finish 200 levels with perfect” might be the same way, where you have to re-enter the CE map after seeing the credits again.
4. To get the Examiner achievement, complete either a main castle scene or one of the interior rooms to 100%, then go to the Wallpapers section in the main screen. Scroll to the wallpaper you just unlocked where the game says you can build the scene, etc. and start building the scene.
5. The Bonus Track and Bonus Habit achievements appear to not always count the clutter games as being played. It was posted in the forum that if you can finish the clutter games before the coin counter sinks all the way down to 25, then it does count, but I found the pick 2 clutter games to be particularly annoying because you are always dinged a few coins any time you start a new pair, not just for mis-clicking, so I can’t get more than 25 coins on any of the pick 2 games. If this is your experience, just keep playing the other minigames when the CE extra minigames unlock and eventually you’ll get all the bonus game achievements.
6. If you want to reset all your Steam Achievements for some reason, hold down the left Ctrl key, then the K and A keys of your keyboard all together. Be warned, this can’t be undone! I’d asked for this because the achievements hadn’t been properly set up during the beta testing phase and nearly all the achievements popped immediately as soon as I started testing. Yeah, I like to earn my achievements legitimately.

Here, Fishie, Fishie!

Oh, those Collectible Fish…

• There are only 15 Collectible Fish, and a Collectible Fish appears in a fish room which is randomly tacked onto a level as you play. Playing in harder difficulty modes gives you more opportunities for getting a fish room.
• The Collectible Fish is like a crab, but it has a limited moves counter. The goal is to get the Collectible Fish to the edge of the playfield or to a hole in the playfield before the moves counter reaches zero. If you zero out the counter, the fish will not be obtained.
• To make things even trickier, you can’t pick off a Collectible Fish with Magic Arrows or move it a space using a bigger hammer. However, you can still drag a Collectible Fish to a wall or hole to get it, just like the crabs, once the Collectible Fish is one space away from the wall/hole.
• Some fish rooms have coin bags in them too. If you don’t get the coin bags in the fish room, you will not get a “perfect” for the level.
• If you miss a Collectible Fish or elect to press the Continue button to finish the level, you will get another chance to get the Collectible Fish in the next level. Since there are 200 levels total and only 15 Collectible Fish, don’t stress too much if you miss a Fish. Some levels are definitely better for getting a fish room than others!
• The fish rooms themselves also vary in difficulty: some I found far easier to manipulate the Collectible Fish than others, which appeared hair-pulling hard. So if you find one fish room too frustrating, just move on and the next one you get could very well be easier.
• The Collectible Fish you’ve obtained go into an aquarium of their own which you view from the main game page. Too bad some of the fish are ugly IMO, but that’s another story.