What causes a match-3 line-clear special not clearing the whole row?

The line-clear activation loops from the special tile's cell outward but stops at the first empty or off-color cell instead of iterating the full row or column extent.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Match-3 Line-Clear Special Not Clearing the Full Row

Quick answer: On activation, iterate every cell in the special tile's row (or column) by index from 0 to width-1, marking each for clearing regardless of color or gaps.

A line-clear bomb should wipe an entire row or column. If it stops at a gap or a different color, your loop is treating it like a match scan instead of a full-line sweep. Clear by index across the whole axis.

How to fix it

1. Sweep the full axis by index

For a horizontal line-clear, loop the column index from 0 to width-1 at the special's row and mark every cell. Do the same with rows for a vertical clear. Do not break on empties or color mismatches.

2. Add cleared cells to the resolution set

Feed every swept cell into the same clear-and-collapse pipeline a normal match uses, so scoring, refill, and cascades all behave consistently.

3. Handle specials caught in the sweep

If the line passes over another special tile, trigger that one too. Queue chained activations so combos resolve in order rather than being skipped.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unity error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.