Niche Shift

Niche Shift is an ocean-themed merge puzzle with a survival rule attached. The food chain is the merge ladder: Plankton merge into Krill, Krill into Fish, and so on upwards until you reach the Leviathan at the top. Moves are made with a swipe, and the developer frames the goal as building a thriving ocean ecosystem.

The catch is hunger. Predators from level 3 upwards count as living creatures, and every move you make leaves them hungrier. According to the developer, merging them is how you feed them. Let one go unfed for too long and it starves, turning into Bones: a useless piece that clogs up the board. That turns a plain chase for the biggest creature into a balancing act between climbing the chain and keeping alive what you already have, which the developer sums up as hunger and balance.

Swipe to make a move; the instructions also list a mouse click or a tap. Bring matching creatures together to merge them up the chain: Plankton to Krill, Krill to Fish, and onwards towards the Leviathan. Keep an eye on predators of level 3 and above, which get hungrier with every move, and merge them before they starve and become Bones.

Hunger rises with every move, merge or not, so moves that achieve nothing still cost your predators. Merge high-level creatures regularly, because a starved one turns into Bones that block space you need. Only predators from level 3 up are described as getting hungry, so lower creatures can wait while you deal with them.

A swipe-based merge puzzle with a hunger mechanic, in a landscape frame. Creatures run from Plankton up to the Leviathan. Starved predators become Bones, which act as obstacles. The instructions list mouse click or tap, and the description mentions swiping.

2048 Classic edition and Money 2048 also merge matching pieces with a swipe, one with numbers on a grid you can resize, the other running from coins up to diamonds.