Catchstack

Coloured tiles fall toward your paddle. Slide under them to catch, then carry each tile over and drop it into the well below. Arrange three of the same colour in a row to clear it and free up space. Miss too many or overfill the well and the run ends.

• Catch falling tiles on the paddle
• Drop a held tile into the column you want in the well
• Make rows of three of a colour to clear them

• Daily, a shared seeded board everyone plays that day
• Practice, endless play to sharpen your timing

• Desktop: ← → or A / D move the paddle, ↓ or Space drop the tile into the well
• Phone & tablet: keyboard recommended for precise catching

• Plan the drop column before you catch so you're not stuck holding a tile
• Keep the well low and even rather than building one tall column
• Clear a row the moment two of its tiles match to make room for the next catch

Catchstack recreates Klax, released by Atari Games in 1990 as an arcade follow-up to Tetris. Tiles tumble down a conveyor toward you, and you catch them on a paddle before dropping them into a well below.

Two things separate it from the game it was answering. Rows count in any direction, diagonals included, which Tetris never allows. And the paddle holds five tiles as a stack, so the tile you need is frequently underneath two you caught by mistake. The pressure comes less from speed than from that small piece of mismanagement compounding — each panicked catch buries the one thing you were waiting for.

Catchstack is an original free browser puzzle that fuses paddle-catching with colour-matching stacking, with a daily seed. No install required.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.