Vel Berry

Vel Berry is a rising stack puzzle with one rule that changes everything: you can only swap sideways. The stack pushes up from below without pause, and the whole game is about clearing lines faster than the floor feeds new ones.

Drag any berry left or right to trade places with its neighbour. Three or more in a row or a column clear. You can also drag a berry into an empty space, which is where the game really opens up. Anything hanging in the air drops straight down, and a berry that lands on top of two of its own kind clears without you touching it again. Set two of those drops up at once and you get a chain, which is worth several times a plain clear.

Under the board sit two controls. RAISE pulls the next row up immediately and pays a small bonus, which is the fastest way to dig a stubborn berry out of the bottom or to feed yourself a fresh row when the board has gone flat. CHILL freezes the rise for six seconds once the meter under it has filled, and it is worth holding back for the moment the stack has crept up near the line.

Velocity climbs the longer you survive, and the stack rises faster with it, so a run that felt comfortable at the start becomes a scramble. If a single berry is pushed past the top line the run ends.

Two modes share the board. Endless simply asks how long you can hold on and how high the score climbs. Sprint asks for eighty cleared berries as fast as possible and keeps your best time.

System logs record your first clear, your longest chain, your first chill and your milestone totals. Ranks list your best endless score and your best sprint time next to a fixed set of machine names. Everything lives on this device, and a single button in the settings clears all of it.

No purchases, no adverts, no waiting. Portrait, one hand, fully offline.