Rocks and Diamonds

Rocks and Diamonds was one of those games you'd find on a Flash portal in the early 2000s. It felt like a direct descendant of older arcade puzzle games, but it ran right in your browser. The experience was simple and self-contained, a product of its time before more complex web games became common.

You control a small character, often a gnome, moving tile by tile through a series of caves. Your job is to collect every diamond scattered across the level while avoiding hazards. The main threats are falling rocks, which you can sometimes outrun or trick into falling into gaps. You also encounter enemies that follow set paths, and you learn to time your movements around them. The pace is methodical; you plan a few steps ahead, because a wrong move can collapse the floor or trap you. It feels like a careful, sometimes tense, game of spatial reasoning.