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Our brain sees this as a reward, releasing dopamine. The tricky thing about play (and our biology) is that dopamine also plays an important role in learning, reinforcing our behavior and pushing us to perform a certain action.

Many experts in the field of psychology believe that it is simplicity that makes three-in-a-row games attractive. At the first levels, the user quickly copes with the tasks, gaining a sense of satisfaction.

Today, there are many free three-in-a-row games for the phone. They work both without internet and online.

Many people may still remember the game "Candy Crush Saga", which was one of the first successful games in the three-in-a-row category. At the peak of its popularity (2014), more than 93 million people played it, and its revenue for three months amounted to more than 493 million dollars!

After that came "Bejeweled" - in it balls were replaced by diamonds, and a competent rearrangement of elements could lead to a chain reaction. Perhaps it was Bejeweled that marked the beginning of the end of the classic three-in-a-row game and launched a conveyor belt of faceless monsters of the casual niche.

However, if the three-in-a-row game were to remain so simple, we would quickly tire, realizing that "the mechanism is worked out, the scheme is learned". But as the levels get harder all the time, and new challenges appear, the victories become less frequent, and so the dopamine surges become more intermittent. We want more, so we keep fighting.

Let's take a look back at the popular three-in-a-row games of the time. First came "Collapse", in which the main distinguishing feature was the added timer, which increased competition.

It was not difficult to replicate the code of any "balls" even in the nineties, and the copyright on game mechanics does not extend to this day. By the early 2000s, the genre began to grow.

The modern history of the genre begins with the release of Chain Shot in 1985. It was created by Kuniaki Moribe. In this computer game, balls of different colors were placed on the board.

The rules of the game "three in a row" are very simple: identical pieces located on the field can be connected three (or more) and removed. The goal is to completely clear the board of the pieces originally placed on it. This uncomplicated idea has become the main hook in such puzzles.

It is difficult to say exactly what game served to form the genre. The mechanics of the game "three in a row" resembles many board games in which you need to find the same elements. For example, mahjong, dominoes, various solitaire and tic-tac-toe.