Gravity Alchemy: Merge Drop

You drop an element into the cauldron. Two of a kind fuse into the next one, and the chain climbs. The cauldron does not empty itself, though: when the pile reaches the death line, the run is over.

Gravity Alchemy is a merge puzzle built on real physics. Every element has weight, friction and bounce, nothing snaps to a grid, and the pile you build is the pile you have to play. You learn it in one drop, and it stays hard the way a physics puzzle is hard: the mistake you made forty seconds ago is still sitting there.

That much you already know. The rest you don't.

▪ FIVE WAYS, FIVE DIFFERENT GAMES

You pick your Way before the run, and it is not a skin: it changes the elements, their size, the friction, the bounce, how fast the cauldron fills — and in three cases the rules themselves.

The Way of Fire — 11 steps, from the Spark to Transmutation. The classic progression, and the reference tuning. Free, always.

The Way of Salt — 10 steps, and salt dissolves. The lowest element on the field melts away on its own: the field consumes itself while you play it.

The Way of Mercury — 15 slow-growing steps. The field stays manageable for a long time, and the run lives on cascades rather than single leaps.

The Way of Sulphur — 12 steps, and two elements that must never touch. If Greek Fire and Aqua Fortis meet, they blow up: both vanish, splinters take their place, and a shockwave scrambles the field. Aiming for the right contact is no longer enough — you have to aim away from the wrong one too.

The Way of Air — 9 steps, and the direction reversed. You launch from below, the pieces rise, and the pile hangs from the lid. Merging does not free space: it moves the danger away.

The same card on two different Ways is two different cards.

▪ EIGHT CARDS, THREE PER RUN

Cards are bought in the laboratory, and you carry three of them into a run. They do not start lit: you light one during the run by tapping its sigil, and every lighting burns a charge.

Heavy Gravity settles the pile and closes the gaps. Narrow Field shrinks the cauldron and pays ×1.6. Symbiosis lets adjacent steps merge, not just identical ones. Affinity makes matching elements drift toward each other. Condensation shrinks the elements and reshuffles the pile. Resonance makes cascades pay. Distillation leaves 40% more essence behind. The Athanor, while it burns, takes the power out of the death line.

Three cards out of eight, and when to light them is yours to decide: no two runs have the same build.

▪ ESSENCE, AND WHAT IT BUYS

Every run leaves essence behind, even one that ended badly. Essence buys the cards, their refills, and the four Ways you don't start with.

And it does not only pay for distance: from the middle of each chain upward, every step you reach for the first time in that run is worth essence on its own. A run you built pays far more than a run you played at random.

▪ THE CODEX OF ELEMENTS

Every element you meet enters the Codex, with its animated drawing and its line. Over fifty elements across five chains, from the Spark to Philosophical Sulphur, and at the start they are all question marks.

▪ THE GREAT WORK

At the top of the chain the circle closes: the two final elements fuse and return to the first, worth two thousand points in one go. Almost nobody gets there.

Everything — elements, effects, sounds — is generated in code: no images, no loading, a few megabytes.

The whole game is playable without spending anything: there are no in-app purchases, and nothing inside is for sale. Essence is earned by playing, and only by playing.

Your save — best scores, essence, discovered elements — stays on your phone. The game sends anonymous gameplay data (score, chosen Way, cards used) to understand how it is being played: on first launch you choose.

Plays offline, one-handed, in five languages: Italian, English, Spanish, French and German.