Polder Windmills

A merge board with a twist: windmills pump water off the land, but any mill caught in the wind-shadow of a taller mill stalls. And the wind keeps turning.

Most merge games only ask you to match tiers. Polder asks WHERE. It is a grid merge game about reclaiming Dutch polder land — and it is gated by the wind.

Tap open water to raise a small windmill; drag a mill onto a same-tier neighbour to merge it into a taller one. Working mills pump water off their own tile, turning teal water into green reclaimed land and paying you guilders. Higher-tier mills pump faster and reclaim more.

Here is the twist that no other merge game has. Wind blows across the board from one edge, shown by a wind rose. A windmill sitting in the LEE — the downwind shadow — of a TALLER mill gets no wind and STALLS: it greys out and stops pumping entirely. Taller mills reclaim faster, but they cast LONGER wind-shadows over everything behind them. So you cannot just stack big mills; you have to place and merge with the wind direction in mind, keeping your tall mills from blotting out the ones behind them.

And the wind ROTATES. Every few moves it swings to a new edge, and a safe layout can suddenly fall into shadow. A tower that was pumping happily now stalls a whole column. You are constantly replanning your merges around a direction that will not hold still.

Drain enough tiles and you can Break Ground on a new, larger polder: you bank charters — a permanent guilder multiplier — and start a wider board. Raise the dyke for more rows, fit bigger sails, deepen the sluices, season fresh timber. If the board floods with no merges left, drain it and start the polder over.

• A real grid merge game — place, drag, merge, tier up • Wind-shadow: mills in the lee of a taller mill stall and grey out • A wind rose that rotates between rounds and reshuffles every plan • Watch teal water turn to green land tile by tile as mills pump • Break Ground prestige banks permanent charters and a larger polder • The dyke works: more rows, bigger sails, richer sluices, fresh timber • Fully offline, no account, nothing collected

Merge with the wind. Reclaim the sea.