Last night, I did no work.. although I did drink a fair amount of Guiness and eat a nice Curry

The noght before however, I did some work.
Clearing bomb blocks now spawn a bomb object which has an arming period, followed by a fuse (with animation) and finally an explosion.
This doesn't currently destroy any blocks, but it will do. Bomb blocks destroyed will release more bombs which arm and detonate.. chain reaction.

This work has also paved the way for the scoring system. When a bonus item or bomb is released, it flies up to land in the first available space, sitting on top of any blocks that exist. If a block lands on them, they fly on top of that block too. This means that the player should always be able to get at the bonusses to collect them.

I've worked out how I'm going to do the scoring too. Each block when it is removed from play will release a bonus item for the player to collect. these items dissappear after time and the player misses the chance to collect the score they have earned. These items might be coins, cherrys, hour glasses etc.. some blocks have a x2 and x3 marker on them, if a line is cleared with x2 or x3 markers, multiple bonusses are released.

Hour glasses slow down the degradation of the chain, giving the player more time to move around.

The only question seems to be, how do I calculate the bonusses?

There are 8 blocks accross each has the potential to contain a x3 bonus
Bonusses are only applied on a single horizontal line. Clearing multiple lines will multiply the amount of score items are worth.

So, if the bonusses are multiplied and each block releases the number of bonus items prescribed by the bonus ((3x3x3x3x3x3x3x3)=6561) x 8 = 52488 items generated.. Too many by far..

If the bonusses are added ((3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3)=24)x8 = 192.. a lot more manageable but not very intuitive

If the bonusses are not added or multiplied at all, but generate multiple items only for bonus blocks then the maximum number of items will be 24

Alternatively, I multiply the scores and only release 1 item per block, so if they were multiplied and the player collected all of the bonus items, they would be worth 52488 points at (6561 * number of lines cleared) each.. but doesn't looks as spectacular.. I could make super bonus items glow of course..

what do you think?

It will make it a very high scoring game though