NOVA

How to play NOVA

• Every slide shifts the whole grid one cell, not all the way to the wall.
• 2 and 3 fuse into 5. They will not merge with anything else.
• From there, matching tiles double: 5+5=10, 10+10=20, and onward.
• A new tile enters from the edge you slid away from. Watch the Next preview.
• Flux ★ is a wildcard. It merges with any tile — upgrading a 2 or 3 to a 5, or doubling anything larger. It shows up once you have reached 40.
• The run ends when no slide in any direction changes the grid.

Scoring: every tile of 5 or higher is worth 5×3ⁿ, where n counts its doublings. A 5 is 5 points, a 10 is 15, a 20 is 45, a 640 is 10,935.

Tips for a higher score

• Pick a corner and stay there. Build your largest tile into one corner and avoid slides that drag it out.
• Use the Next preview. A tile enters on the edge you slide away from, so you decide where it lands.
• Clear 2s and 3s early. They only pair with each other, so stray singles clog the grid fast.
• Bank your Flux. A ★ next to a big tile is worth more than spending it on a 2.
• Undo is for blunders, not experiments. Three per run, and no more.

About the game

NOVA is a free browser puzzle in the sliding-merge genre, playable on phones, tablets and desktops with nothing to install and no account to create. It is written as a single page of plain JavaScript, so it loads in well under a second and works offline once cached.

If you arrived here looking for the browser puzzle that used to live at threesjs.io, this page explains what NOVA does differently.