The walls are the clock
They close for the whole run, and they speed up the longer you last. A merge is the only thing that pushes them back.
Drop & merge puzzle · iPhone
Squeeze the Orbs: a drop and merge puzzle game for iPhone
The jar is closing. Every merge wins you back space.
0points
Drop glowing orbs into a glass jar. Two of a kind touch and become the next one up. Meanwhile the walls are creeping inward, and they never stop. Every merge shoves them back out, and the bigger the merge, the more air you buy.
There is no line to stay under. There is only the next merge, and how long you can keep paying for room.
Free · no ads · no purchases
- One thumb
- Plays offline
- No energy, no waiting
- Real marble physics
How it plays
A merge puzzle where the jar is the clock
One real run, start to spill. Scroll to play it.
Drop
Aim with your thumb and lift it to drop. The orbs are glass: they bounce, roll off each other and settle like real marbles.
The walls close
From the first second, both walls creep inward. The AIR meter is how long you have until they meet, if you never merged again.
Merge to breathe
Two of the same kind touch and become the next one up, and the walls are shoved back out. A merge feeds the wall it happened next to, so starve one side and the jar closes lopsided.
Chain it
Merges that land in quick succession compound, and each link in the chain buys more air than the last.
A Lantern cracks the glass
The eighth and biggest orb is the Lantern. Making one fractures the jar, and the jar grows taller for it.
Two Lanterns make a garnet
When two Lanterns meet they collapse into a small, dense gem that sinks through the pile. Gems fuse only with their own kind, and whatever you are holding at the end is yours to keep.
Spill
The squeeze pushes your pile upward until something comes to rest above the rim. That is the end of the run: no line was crossed, the jar simply ran out of room.
The ladder
Eight tiers, from a Spark to a Lantern
Two of a kind make the next one up, and every step up is a bigger orb, a bigger refund of air, and more points. Press one to hear it: its note is worked out from its size, so the Spark rings high and the Lantern rings low.
And then, the gems
Two Lanterns collapse into a garnet. Two garnets fuse into an amethyst, right there in the jar, for the biggest gasp of air in the game. Nothing carries over between runs, so a diamond is not a grind. It is a story.
What you are still holding when the run ends goes on the shelf in your Collection, and the title screen’s jar shows off every gem you have ever banked.
- Garnettwo Lanterns, collapsed
- Amethysttwo garnets, fused
- Emeraldtwo amethysts, fused
- Sapphiretwo emeralds, fused
- Rubytwo sapphires, fused
- Diamondtwo rubies, fused
The rules that matter
Every drop is a question about where, not just what
Each wall keeps its own time
A merge mostly feeds the wall it happened beside. Merge on one side only and the jar closes lopsided around you.
You lose by spilling
No losing line is drawn across the jar. The squeeze lifts your pile until a piece rests above the rim. Never merge, and the walls meet in the middle instead.
Orbs dim as they sit
An orb left unmerged slowly goes out, and a dim orb refunds less air and scores less. Nursing a big chain is a gamble, not a free option.
Chains pay more
One merge often knocks the next pair together. Merges that land close together compound, so a cascade buys back far more air than the same merges one at a time.
Standard or Hardcore
Standard dims your orbs. Hardcore never does, but its clock runs faster, its jar starts narrower, and a spill comes sooner. Same jar, meaner timer.
Made of nothing
No image files. No sound files.
Every pixel in the game is drawn and every sound is computed while you play. Each impact is synthesised from the collision that caused it: the pitch comes from the size of the orbs, how long it rings depends on how buried in the pile they are, and no two hits are quite alike.
A loose Spark gives a bright, glassy tick. A Lantern rings lower and longer, unless it lands on a packed pile, which damps it to a short, heavy knock. The jar answers too, and as the walls close in its voice tightens, so what you hear late in a run is the squeeze itself.
The jar at the top of the page, computed collision by collision, the same way.
On your phone
Squeeze the Orbs on iPhone
Your gems live in the title jar 
Merge to push the walls back Every second, the jar gets smaller 
Hardcore: faster clock, no mercy Lanterns crack the glass 
Keep what you carry out
What you get
A merge game with no ads, no energy and no waiting
- Genre
- Drop & merge puzzle, with real marble physics
- Played
- Portrait, with one thumb
- Modes
- Standard and Hardcore
- A run
- A few minutes, if you can keep buying air
- Device
- iPhone, iOS 15 or later
- Network
- Plays entirely offline
- Price
- Free. Nothing to buy, nothing to wait for
- Age rating
- 4+
No account. No ads. No purchases. It never asks for a permission. The app reports anonymous play statistics, which you can switch off in Settings, and your scores and gem collection stay on your phone. The privacy policy is the long version.
Questions
Questions about Squeeze the Orbs
- Is it free?
- Yes. It is free on the App Store, with no ads, no purchases, no energy and no timers between runs.
- How do I play?
- Drag your thumb across the jar to aim and lift it to drop. Two orbs of the same kind that touch merge into the next one up. The jar’s walls creep inward for the whole run and every merge pushes them back out, so the AIR meter is the clock.
- How do I lose?
- There is no losing line. The squeeze lifts your pile until a piece comes to rest above the rim, and that spill ends the run. If you never merge at all, the walls simply meet in the middle instead.
- What is the difference between Standard and Hardcore?
- In Standard, orbs dim as they sit, and a dim orb buys back less air and scores less. Hardcore drops the dimming and speeds up the clock instead.
- Does it work offline?
- Yes. It plays entirely offline: there is nothing to download and nothing is held back in airplane mode. It never asks for a permission of any kind.
- What does it collect?
- No account, no ads, no purchases, and nothing that identifies you. The iPhone app reports anonymous play statistics, such as how long a game lasted and how it went, and you can switch that off in Settings. Your scores and your gem collection stay on your phone. The privacy policy has the details.
- Is it on iPad or Android?
- It is made for iPhone, portrait and one-thumbed, and runs on iOS 15 or later. An Android version is not out yet.
- Something is wrong. Who do I tell?
- A person reads support@bendigogames.com. The support page answers the common questions about scores, sound and the collection.
The jar is closing.
How long can you keep buying air?
Free on iPhone · Support · support@bendigogames.com