Hmmm tricky.. I'm actually curious about how to do a match 3 game (which is how i found this post)..
You could possibly use some kind of json data.. imagine defining a grid with text.
Something like:
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 1 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 0 0
I'm not comfortable with json and external data but there have been some good threads on how to get data from a spreadsheet over to C2 through a json import behavior.
Good luck!
Caleb