Merge Mates

Everyone looks the same today.

You are one face in a crowd of look-alikes - and somewhere in that crowd is the one mate who matches you exactly. Drag anywhere on the board, release on your twin, and the two of you merge into one. Then you are someone new, looking for the next twin. Clear the crowd and the level is yours.

Merge Mates is a spot-the-difference puzzle with no clock in it. Merging is the only thing you do and the only way a level ends - there is no timer, no score, and no way to lose. A near miss costs you nothing but another look. The pressure comes from the crowd itself: hand-drawn mates who will not stand still while you are trying to read the board.

Every mate is a silhouette first - a kettle, a cactus, a blimp, a very suspicious cat - so you find your twin by shape, never by colour. That is a design choice rather than a limitation: the whole game is playable if you cannot tell red from green.

Across 46 levels the crowd swells and thins, but the board is what really turns on you. It stretches wider than your screen, so mates wander off one edge and back in from the other. They pick up speed. Scenery piles up until a silhouette can go missing behind a bookshelf. Moving walkways carry mates away from wherever you last saw them. And on the dark levels, the room is lit only by the lamps you switch on, so most of the crowd is a pair of eyes in the black until you find the light. Then the last level drops the entire cast of 61 in at once.

WHAT'S IN IT
- 46 levels, ending on a single crowd of all 61 mates
- A cast of 61 characters, each with its own silhouette, walk and opinions
- Dark rooms you light one lamp at a time, moving walkways, and hand-dressed scenery
- No timer, no score, no fail state - play at your own pace
- One-handed portrait play: drag from anywhere on the screen
- English and Portuguese (Brazil)
- Reduce motion, haptics, and separate music and sound toggles

Lovely crowd, isn't it?