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Merged: Your New Time Waster

You know that I like to find games that waste time… I mean… help me relax while I’m waiting in line.  I am currently obsessed with a game called Merged (here it is on Android), and it’s so good, though it has a bit of a learning curve.  Okay, so this is how you play.

You start off with a blank board and a single die at the bottom of the screen.  You can place it anywhere on the board.  I like to always begin at the lower right corner, but that’s just me.  In the example below, I randomly start out with an orange 2.

Merged! app

I place it in the lower right corner of the board.  Once I do that, I receive either another die or set of dice.  In this example, I get two dice.

Merged! app

The key is to get three die of the same colour to touch.  So, in this case, I could slide over the dice (they move together) so that they run purple, orange, orange at the bottom of the screen.  But that is NOT what I do.  Instead, I tap the purple/orange dice until they are stacked, purple on top and orange on the bottom.  I move that onto the board as seen below:

Merged! app

This is where it gets fun.  You can see that I get another die in the queue: an orange 2.  Perfect.  I place that to the right of the purple die on the board, and that connects three orange 2s in a row.  As long as they are touching, they are connected whether they’re in a straight line or an L shape.  Once you have 3 (or more) connected, they merge and become a single die, one number higher than the group that just merged.  So all those 2s will become a pink 3.

merged_4

You’ll notice that the new die will be wherever you placed the last die (or dice) that kicked off the merge.  So those purple 1s (once they have 3 dice in a row) will form a 2.  Another group of 2s will form a 3.  And hey, those 3s will all merge to clear out a little bit of the board and form a 4.  The game keeps moving on, and you can place any new die anywhere on the board, so don’t feel as if you need to have the new ones touch the old ones unless they help with a merge.  And don’t forget that when the dice are in the queue, you can tap them so they shift around to fit a space better.

Be strategic.  You want to start growing your 1s pretty close to any 2s on the board because the 1s will eventually merge into 2s and therefore join along with the existing 2s.  Make sense?

Merged! app

What happens after you get 3 6s in a row?  Those yellow 6s merge together to form an M.  It’s just a big, white pulsating M, and when you get 3 Ms in a row, they go off like a bomb, clearing out a bunch of other dice around it and giving you major points.  My high score so far has been 896.  The game is over when the whole board is filled and you can’t move anymore.

Happy playing…

11 comments

1 Catwoman73 { 03.06.16 at 8:10 am }

Oh how I wish I hadn’t read this… the last thing I need is another time-waster. But that certainly isn’t going to stop me from checking it out!

2 a { 03.06.16 at 9:44 am }

I saw an ad for this and was thinking about downloading…

3 illustr8d { 03.06.16 at 10:44 am }

Ooooh That looks fun. And like a brain-train game, so I won’t count it as wasting time, I’ll consider it brain-training. 😉

4 chickenpig { 03.06.16 at 1:06 pm }

Oooooh. I like the look of this one 🙂 Thanks Mel. I spend about 20 minutes every week day waiting for my kids to get off the bus. I have to be withing eyesight of the bus driver when she arrives or she’ll just keep on going. This greatly limits what I can do. If the weather is nice I can read. But when it is cold, I use my tablet to keep me entertained and this game looks perfect.

5 Charlotte { 03.06.16 at 1:55 pm }

So, this has nothing to do with the game because I can’t let myself get sucked into games because they take over my life. But…thank you for writing “waiting IN line” instead of waiting “ON line” like I see so many times. And it drives me crazy!!! You wait IN line, not ON one. Arrrr! So thanks for using the correct word. ????

6 April { 03.06.16 at 4:34 pm }

What, no more Candy Crush?

7 Lori Lavender Luz { 03.06.16 at 9:21 pm }

I’m so happy this example started with orange and purple <3.

8 Mali { 03.06.16 at 10:59 pm }

Argh. I’ve seen it and now won’t be able to stop myself. I blame you for my lack of productivity. (Yes, I excel at procrastination and avoidance.)

9 No Baby Ruth { 03.07.16 at 6:48 am }

Well, I’ve just now downloaded it. I’m a sucker for games like this anyway, but what really got me was that I recognized the board layout from my favorite time-suck 1010! I had to go check and, indeed, they’re made by the same company.

10 JustHeather { 03.07.16 at 10:55 am }

Downloaded and played. It’s fun! I’ll show it to my hubby, I think he’ll like it too. I think my highest was 900-something, but I’m not sure now. (The score at the top, is that your highest ever or accumulative?)

11 Caryn { 03.07.16 at 3:20 pm }

Fifteen games in and I can feel the addiction coming on. I just hit 1342.

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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