Jarbles is a close-listening sound-puzzle game that uses tangible objects from the traditional childrens games of Jacks and Marbles.
The player selects a puzzle and line-art Jacks are thrown and scattered across a white screen. Touching a Jack activates its inherent sound and brings out its colour. The goal of the first phase of the game is to find the pairs of Jacks that best blend together according to the unique logic of any given audio puzzle. The puzzles may be melodic, rhythmic, semantic, or may work according to more abstract arrangements of audio frequencies.
When two Jacks are properly combined, they transform into a multi-coloured Marble. That is to say, they are JARBLED. Once all of the the Jacks have been merged into Marbles, the player must complete the puzzle by fusing the marbles in proper order. When a puzzle is completed the player is rewarded by hearing the entire audio composition from start to finish.
Completing one puzzle earns the player a point and unlocks the next puzzle on the puzzle branch. Players may also replay a completed puzzle and improve their scores in the categories of Speed, Accuracy, Listening and Decisiveness. Achieving a perfect score of 100 results in a special visual treat.