What we set out to prove
A merge-idle in the Travel Town / Merge Mansion lane - orders on a board, a town that upgrades when you complete them, and a collection book that gives people a reason to merge past the order they needed.
What made it hard
Merge games print money when the board is readable and the meta has a next thing. They fail when orders need items you cannot see a path to, or when the town upgrade is just a skin with no new board space. We wanted 150 orders that always have a legal merge path, and districts that actually change the puzzle, not just the wallpaper.
How we solved it
The board is 7×8 with a locked rim that opens as the district upgrades. Each district has 25 orders. Orders are generated from a recipe graph so we never ask for a tier-8 item before the player has seen the chain. Energy is the session gate (typical 5-8 minutes), not a fake fail. Collection book sits beside orders: extra merges fill sets, sets unlock a board booster. No ads on the merge action itself - rewarded ads refill energy or speed a generator, never skip an order.
6 districts × 25 orders = 150 campaign orders
Session: 5-8 min, 2-4 orders per session
- District 1 - Market Row25 ordersBasic chains: crates, tools, food
- District 2 - Workshop25 ordersTwo generators, split recipes
- District 3 - Riverside25 ordersTimed produce, extra board column
- District 4 - Station25 ordersTicket orders, combo boosters
- District 5 - Hillside25 ordersRare chain, collection sets
- District 6 - Plaza25 orders + finaleFull board, event-only chain
Campaign ordersCollection bookWeekend energy eventSeasonal board skin
What shipped
Grey-box testers completed District 1 without stalling, which is the kill-test for merge. Drop-off in District 2 tracked with energy, not confusion. That told us the recipe graph was doing its job and the live-ops lever is energy events, not emergency rebalancing of the first 50 orders.
UnityC#Recipe graphBoard simEnergy + IAP economy
Open lobby
Got a game that needs this kind of attention?
Pitch the problem - we'll tell you which engine, and how we'd prove the fun first.