Yarn Drop
Matching yarn winds together into something bigger. The basket never actually fills.
How to Play Yarn Drop
- Tap anywhere in a column to drop the waiting ball of yarn into it.
- When the ball lands touching one or more of the same number, they all wind together into a single ball one size bigger.
- That bigger ball can immediately wind again with whatever it is now touching, so one drop can set off a chain.
- If the basket ever fills to the top, the cat lifts the top row away and you carry on. There is no game over.
Controls
| Keyboard | None. Click the column you want to drop into. |
|---|---|
| Touch | Tap a column to drop the yarn there. |
Tips
- Build sideways, not upward. Three of the same number in a row wind into one ball and take a whole layer of height with them.
- The preview in the corner is worth planning around — a column you would rather not use now is often exactly right for the next one.
- Big balls at the bottom edges are dead weight. Keep the largest ones where something can still reach them from two sides.
About Yarn Drop
Drop yarn into a basket and touching balls of the same size wind into one bigger ball. When the basket fills, the top row is lifted away rather than ending the run. It runs directly in your browser with no download or sign-up, on desktop and mobile alike.
Design notes: how Yarn Drop was built
Merging cascades only from the ball that was just dropped. Scanning the whole board for equal neighbours after every move is easier to write and ruins the game: a single tap tidies the entire basket, and choosing which column to use stops meaning anything. Restricting the chain to the cell you touched is what keeps a drop a decision.
Gravity has to report back. When a group merges, the cells above fall, and the merged ball itself may fall with them — so the settle function takes the cell it is tracking and returns where that cell ended up. Without that the chain check runs on an empty square and every cascade stops after one step.
The first palette started at a colour close to the basket's own cream, which meant the two most common balls in the game were also the two hardest to see. The ladder now begins at a saturated green and each step moves in both hue and weight, so a large ball reads before you have counted anything.
More of these in the dev notes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the merging decide what counts as touching?
Balls connected up, down, left or right by a chain of the same number all wind together at once, which means a group of four merges as one event rather than as three separate pairs.
What happens when the basket fills up?
Nothing ends. The top ball in each column is lifted away with a soft sound and play continues, so a bad stretch costs you height rather than the whole run.
Why do the numbers that appear get bigger over time?
The size of the yarn you are given scales with the biggest ball you have ever made. Without that, a late board would be spent winding ones together purely as bookkeeping.
Is there a maximum size?
Eleven. Getting there takes a long chain of doublings and a lot of room made in the right order, and the sound it makes on the way is different from anything else in the game.
Browse every game on Neon Arcade · read the dev notes behind them