thx for playing and the story! :D
i'm glad you like the game
i have some similar nostalgic memories of match-3, hidden-object games and some minigames, particularly one with flowers
i remember a game where you had to click on flowers to take care of them, maybe some monsters too to fight them - no, it was not Plants Vs Zombies - then you had to make bouquets out of them with some very simple puzzle. the game oozed the artstyle and atmoshpere of minigames of that era, hidden object games, 3-match games...etc
ive played that one ~20 years ago but it stayed with me just as much as the bigger, more serious games :D (checked it in Google out of nostalgia, i think it was Magic Farm: Ultimate Flower)
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as for the bugs i suspected there might be some
i had to be really fast to finish in time and there were quite some glitches like this, where jewels stacked on each other...there were holes in the rows, not all matches were cleared...etc
i myself played the game after submission, even reached 10k points (i got a little addicted :D) but couldn't glitch it out and as you said, it was after playing for a short while so at least it's not a bug that comes out with every match