Bejeweled is a puzzle game by PopCap Games

PopCap Games

PopCap Games is an American video game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs about 400 people...

, first developed for browsers

Browser game

A browser game is a computer game that is played over the Internet using a web browser. Browser games can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins. Browser games include all video game genres and can be single-player or multiplayer...

 in 2001

2001 in video gaming

-Events:* Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts John Carmack of id Software to the AIAS Hall of Fame...

. Three follow-ups to this game have been released. More than 75 million copies of Bejeweled have been sold, and the game has been downloaded more than 500 million times.
The game was initially created by PopCap Games as a web-based Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

 game called Diamond Mine, inspired by the gameplay of Shariki

Shariki

Shariki is a puzzle game by Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin, developed for DOS in 1994.The goal of the game is to gain progressively higher scores by matching three or more balls of the same color in line . These balls then explode and a new ones appear in their place...

.