Galaxy Merge
Merge cosmic objects from dust to universe. Swipe or use arrow keys.
How to play Galaxy Merge
Galaxy Merge is a 2048-style sliding puzzle. Every move slides every tile on the board as far as it can go in one direction. When two tiles of the same cosmic object touch, they fuse into the next tier up — and your score increases by the new tile's value. A new low-tier tile spawns somewhere on the board after each move. When the board fills up and no merges are possible, the game ends.
The eleven tiers are: Dust → Asteroid → Moon → Planet → Star → Nebula → Galaxy → Cluster → Supercluster → Void → Universe. Reaching the Universe tile means you've merged the entire cosmos out of a starting dust mote. Most players never make it past Galaxy on their first session — it's harder than it looks.
Tips
- Keep your biggest tile in a corner. The classic 2048 strategy — pick a corner (top-left works for most players) and never move it.
- Build down from your anchor. Sort your tiles in descending order along the row/column adjacent to your corner. This way, when you merge upward, the chain cascades.
- Don't swipe up unless you have to. Swiping up disrupts your anchor strategy. Reserve it for emergencies.
- Combo merges score more. When two merges happen in the same move, you get bonus momentum. Plan for chains.
Score like an astronomer
Every merge pays double the tier before it: two Dust tiles fuse into an Asteroid for 4 points, two Asteroids make a Moon for 8, and the chain doubles all the way to 2,048 points for the final Void-into-Universe merge. One deep chain out-scores dozens of scattered merges, so feed a single anchor corner. New tiles spawn as Dust 85% of the time and Asteroid the other 15%, so the board constantly refills with clutter to fold in. Undo stores exactly one move: a fire extinguisher, not a time machine.
The real cosmic ladder
The tier ladder follows how astronomers map the cosmos: dust clumps into asteroids, stars are born inside nebulae, and galaxies gather into clusters and superclusters. Our Milky Way belongs to Laniakea, a supercluster first mapped in 2014, and between these structures stretch the great cosmic voids. Slide that Void tile into place and you are rebuilding the large-scale structure of everything.