Melon Drop — Fruit Merge Puzzle

About this game

Melon Drop is a physics game about a jar you are slowly filling with fruit. You move along the top and let one go; it falls, rolls, and settles wherever the pile lets it. When two of the same fruit come to rest touching each other they merge into the next one up the ladder — two cherries make a strawberry, two strawberries a grape, and on through eleven fruit to the melon at the top. That is the whole rule, and it is a trap. Every merge makes something bigger, so clearing space and filling space are the same action. A pair of cherries tucked into a gap becomes a strawberry that no longer fits the gap. The jar rises, and the only thing holding it back is whether you dropped each fruit where its partner could reach it. There is no timer and nothing chasing you. The run ends when a fruit comes to rest above the line near the top and stays there — which means a fruit falling past the line on its way down costs you nothing, and a pile that has already settled above it costs you everything. You get two fruit of warning, which is enough to plan a merge and not enough to plan three. The fruit are simulated properly: they have mass, they roll off shoulders, they wedge, and a big one arriving will shove a small one out of the way. A merge happens where the two fruit were, so a pair that meets on a slope produces something already rolling. Learning to place a fruit so its partner arrives from the right side is most of the skill. Every run is dealt from a seed, and the same seed always deals the same fruit in the same order. Share a run and your friend gets the exact sequence you played, which makes two scores worth comparing rather than two different games with the same name.

Controls

Move to aim, then tap or click to drop the fruit.

Touch

• Slide a finger across the jar to move the fruit waiting at the top.
• Tap anywhere in the jar to drop it at that column.

Keyboard

• Left and Right move the fruit along the top.
• Space or Enter drops it.

How to play

Fill the jar without letting it overflow. Two of the same fruit that touch will merge into the next one up.

Merging

• Fruit merge only when they are the same kind and they touch. Size is the whole ladder: cherry, strawberry, grape, satsuma, persimmon, apple, pear, peach, pineapple, honeydew, melon.
• A merge happens where the two fruit met, and the new fruit is bigger than either of them, so it may immediately touch a third and merge again.
• Merging up scores more than the fruit that went into it, so chains are worth setting up.

The line

• The dashed line near the top is the limit. A fruit falling past it costs you nothing.
• The run ends only when a fruit has come to rest above the line and stayed there for a moment.

Planning

• Two fruit of warning are shown above the jar. Use the second one to decide where the first should go.
• Keep the big fruit low and to one side. A melon in the middle splits the jar into two halves you cannot merge across.

Read the full Melon Drop — Fruit Merge Puzzle rules and strategy →