[Jenison]

The cannons fire cannon balls into a gem slot. If you select the cannon ball in time, you disarm it and get some points.

If it explodes it takes 2 - 4 gems with it and you dont get any points. Plus the chance the game could be over if there are no matches left. So its in your interest to disarm them.

You can collect cannon balls and when you have enough, you can fire one back at the ship. Do that X times, the ship sinks and you move onto the next level. So you are in control when you want to move onto the next level. You can wait though to rack up some points as the motive is to play a level and get a higher score. Think Donkey Kong. You can blow by a level without really scoring anything or you can stick around and try to get a higher score.

The captain can fire anywhere between 1 and 6 cannon balls. The harder the level the greater the chance of more to be fired.

EDIT - also, NPC's will be entering from stage left and stage right. Removing gems periodically. We are still working on them and what they are going to be doing. Hopefully I'll have one in the game soon. I'm also working on a mechanic so you can prevent an npc from doing so.