Pixel Arcade
About this game
Tile Cascade is a puzzle game with two things happening at once. A conveyor belt at the top of the screen feeds coloured tiles toward you at a steady rate; you slide a catcher left and right to collect them before they fall off the end, and you drop them into a five-column, five-row well below.
Left and right move the catcher, down or space drops the tile currently on top of your stack, and up throws it back onto the belt — which is the release valve when you have caught something you cannot use. On touch, the same three actions sit under the screen. You can hold five tiles at a time, and because only the top one can be dropped, a badly ordered stack is as much of a problem as a badly filled well.
Three tiles of one colour in a row, column or diagonal clear and score, with diagonals and longer lines worth substantially more. Each wave sets a specific target — five horizontal lines, three diagonals, a points threshold — and both filling the well and letting too many tiles fall off the belt will end the run.
The habit that works is to reserve the two outer columns for colours you are unsure about and build your intended lines in the middle three. Conveyor puzzles are a distinctive late-1980s idea: the difficulty comes from an incoming stream you cannot pause, rather than from gravity.
FAQ
How many tiles can I hold?
Up to five, stacked. Only the top one drops, so the order you catch them in matters as much as where you put them.
What is the wave goal?
Each wave asks for something specific — a number of lines, a number of diagonals, or a points total. The goal is shown before the wave starts.
Is it like a falling-block game?
The opposite, really. You control when a tile enters the well, not how fast it falls, so the pressure comes from the belt behind you.
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