Overview: If you’ve ever played Bejeweled (or one of its many imitatiors) Bejeweled Blitz will be instantly familiar. You swap gems to form rows or columns of three – that’s it. It’s deceptively simple, but Bejeweled was created ten years ago and is still going strong – and this latest entry in the series proves it.

The twist to Blitz is that you only have one minute to swap gems. You’ll never get an “out of moves” message, but speed is everything for getting a high score. Set up combos to get multiplier gems, and match longer rows to get special gems that clear whole areas. It’s deceptively simple, but the pace is frantic and it’s far too easy to say “just one more game!” for an hour or more.

In the course of normal gameplay, you’ll match gems that contain coins. Between games, you can spend these coins on “Boosts” that start you off with multipliers or gems or give you a couple of different panic buttons to use. You can spend Facebook Credits to buy coins, but it’s entirely possible to achieve a very high score without them, and you will pick up enough coins in normal play to keep a couple Boosts going most of the time.

Popcap is mostly using Bejeweled Blitz as a teaser for their regular, non-online games. They often offer promotions or discounts on downloading their regular games, and you can get an offline version of Blitz that way – you can also purchase it for the iPhone. They also run a weekly drawing for a 17″ laptop – the only thing you have to do to enter is play one game that week, although you’ll probably have to have at least a few friends actively playing to qualify for the minimum combined score.

Bejeweled Blitz is definitely up to Popcap’s usual standard, and unlike many Facebook games, it’s a pure arcade game with no greater commitment than the 60 seconds it takes for each match to complete. It’s a great alternative to all the timer-driven, progress-based games out there, and it’s tons of fun.