Juicy Merge

Juicy Merge - a physics puzzle built around a single glass vessel that slowly fills with fruit. A piece hangs above the container and follows the finger across the top of the screen, and lifting the finger lets it fall along a dashed guide line into the jar below. Everything inside obeys gravity: pieces roll off one another, settle into gaps and press down on the pile as it grows. When two pieces of the same kind touch, they fuse into a single larger fruit and the points for that fusion are added to the counter at the top of the screen, with each step of the ladder worth more than the one before it. The ladder runs from cherries through strawberry, plum, lemon, apple, orange and pineapple up to the watermelon, and only the four smallest kinds are handed out to drop, so every larger fruit exists only as the outcome of a fusion. A short pause after each drop keeps the pace steady, and because a fusion can push its neighbours into contact, one well placed piece can set off several fusions in a row. The container has a marked line near its rim that lights up as the pile approaches it; a piece resting above that line for a moment ends the round, so the fruit has to be kept low even as the pieces inside grow larger and take up more room. The pause emblem freezes the field and opens a panel to continue the same round, start it over from an empty jar, or step back to the main screen, while the house emblem leaves the round directly. When a round ends, a summary screen shows the points from that round next to the best total so far and pictures the largest fruit that was formed. The best total and the largest fruit ever reached are kept on the device and can be opened from the main screen at any time, so progress carries over between launches. The game runs in portrait, plays with one finger, works offline and needs no account.