Fold: Puzzle Game

FOLD is a game about folding. There is a sheet of paper, some pieces of ink sitting on it, and nothing else.

Swipe across the sheet. Everything before your finger folds over the rest, and flips on the way, the way paper actually does. Two pieces landing in the same cell merge, and their parts add up. When the cell is finally full, it becomes a shape: it scores, and it frees itself.

Nothing is ever destroyed. What overlaps, though, is lost. That is waste, it never comes back, and too much waste ends the game.

That is the whole rule. What you do with it is the hard part.

YOU CAN SEE WHAT'S COMING

The next pieces are shown above the sheet, in the order they will fall. And they fall on the cells your fold just emptied, so you choose where they land by choosing your fold. Nothing is drawn at random during a game.

That is what makes looking ahead genuinely pay. A player who plans three folds ahead scores roughly twice what a player taking the best immediate move does.

THE STREAK

A fold that scores while wasting almost nothing extends your streak, and the streak multiplies your next fold, up to five times. A lucky hit pays once. Three prepared folds in a row pay far more.

THE CUTS

How the ink is cut changes the game completely. There are six cuts, and each one starts from a shape and cuts it up.

Round: a disc cut into four quarters. You need all four. The easiest one, and the one to start with. Triangle: a square cut along its diagonals. Two triangles facing each other across a border make a diamond, which is what makes chains possible. Square: a square cut into four quadrants. Nothing combines across cells, only a whole cell counts. Cross: five squares in a cross. The middle square crosses folds without ever turning, so it is the one you place first. Octagon: eight parts per cell. The most valuable shape in the game, and the hardest to assemble. Mix: round, triangle and square on one sheet. Two different cuts never merge with each other.

Each cut keeps its own best score and its own leaderboard. A good score on Square has nothing to do with a good score on Triangle, so mixing them would mean nothing.

THE MODES

Endless: the marathon. The sheet refills faster and faster, so a game always ends, but it lasts three to five times longer than Wear. Wear: a crease only takes four folds. Thirty-two folds in all, and scores you can compare directly. Puzzle: 48 levels across eleven chapters, each with a fixed deal, a counted number of folds and a target to reach. Every level has at least one solution, and the game remembers how many tries it took you. The second half is played on other sheet shapes: wider, smaller, larger, notched, perforated. Watermark: a mode of its own. You are shown an imprint and the number of folds that produced it, and it is up to you to find the way back. Paper stacks and is never lost, but a fold cannot be undone. Daily challenge: the same sheet for everyone until midnight.

RUN CODES

At the end of a game you can copy a code. Send it to someone and they will play the very same sheet, with the same pieces in the same order.

It is also what makes the leaderboards hold up. The server replays the game fold by fold from its code and keeps the score it computes itself. A score no game could produce is refused.

WHAT THERE ISN'T

No account to create, no password, no connection required. The game works entirely offline. Progress is saved to your Apple Account, so it follows you if you change iPhone.

Available in English and French.