Coin Strike

One swipe moves everything. Flick up, down, left or right and the entire board of coin tiles travels that way at once, sliding until something stops it. When two coins of equal rank come to rest against each other, they fuse into the next rank up and add their worth to your score. That single rule is the whole grammar of this puzzle, and learning to speak it fluently is the entire challenge. Because the grid moves as one piece, nothing can be nudged in isolation. Every direction you choose rearranges the whole board, so a swipe that lands the merge you wanted may also drag three other coins into exactly the wrong corner. Good play is less about spotting the next pair and more about keeping the board tidy: building your highest ranks along one edge, feeding smaller coins towards them in order, and holding a line of escape open for when the arrangement turns awkward. There are 30 levels, and each one names a target tile you have to assemble before it will let you through. The early boards are a roomy 4x4, with space to be careless and recover. As you progress the grid stretches out to 6x6, which sounds generous until you realise how much further coins can scatter and how many half-finished chains you end up nursing at once. Later levels also set immovable blocks into the field, stubborn squares that absorb a slide and break the clean sweeps you had grown used to, forcing you to plan merges around obstacles rather than straight through them. The pace sharpens too, with fresh coins dropping in more quickly and filling the gaps you were saving for something better. There is no timer counting you out and no way to be struck down by a single mistake. The round ends only when the board jams completely, with every square occupied and no two neighbours equal enough to combine. That makes it an unusually honest sort of puzzle: if you lose, you can trace the loss back through your own swipes to the moment the grid stopped breathing. Most defeats are decided several moves before they arrive. It suits a settled, thinking sort of play. Read the board, pick the direction that costs you the least, and watch small coins climb steadily into larger ones until the rank you were asked for finally appears in the corner. Then the grid grows again, the blocks multiply, and the shape of a well-kept board has to be learnt all over. Simple to pick up in a single swipe, and quietly demanding by the time the sixth column opens up.

Golden Coin Clash