Watermelon Stack 3D

Watermelon Stack 3D takes the fruit-merging idea off the flat screen and puts it in a bowl you can circle around. Rather than letting fruit fall from a line at the top, you choose an angle, set how high to aim and throw each piece onto a growing pile. When two fruits of the same kind meet, they join into the next size up and your score rises.

There are 11 fruit types on the ladder. The smallest is a blueberry and the largest is the watermelon the title promises. The developer calls it physics-based and describes the fruit as squishy, so the pile is a heap rather than a neat grid. The one way to lose is a spill: if any fruit tumbles over the rim and touches the table, the run is over and your score stands.

On a computer, click and drag sideways to swing your aim around the bowl, and drag up or down to change the height you are aiming at. Press the Throw button to launch the fruit. On a phone or tablet, swipe left or right to rotate the aim and swipe up or down for height. Land two identical fruits together to merge them.

Angle and height are both yours to set before every throw, so take a moment to line a fruit up with its twin instead of throwing at the first open spot. Keep the pile away from the rim where you can: a single fruit reaching the table ends the game, however well the run was going.

A 3D drop-and-merge puzzle in a portrait frame. Controls are given for desktop (mouse drag plus a Throw button) and mobile (swipes). There are 11 fruit types to merge through, and the aim is the highest score you can reach before something spills.

Fruit Merge : Juice Jumble and Fruit Merge Arena use the same two-of-a-kind rule with dropped fruit instead of thrown fruit, and Juice Jumble adds buttons that slide the whole box sideways.