How to play Vcrush

Vcrush is the sweet-shop match-3 on this hub. The tray is eight by eight. You are behind the counter. A move is a swap of two sweets that share an edge. Three of a kind clear. The cascade fills the holes from above. You have fifteen levels and five lives.

Two inputs work on a phone: drag a sweet onto its neighbour, or tap one and then tap the next. A keyboard on a laptop uses arrows and space. If the tiles feel small, the larger-sweets control on the play screen grows the targets. Colour is not the only cue; each flavour has its own silhouette.

The question most people ask first: a hazelnut is an ingredient, not a sweet. To get rid of one, clear the sweets directly underneath it so it falls; when it reaches the bottom row of its column it slides out of the tray and counts towards the level's total.

What follows is the same guidebook that sits behind the question mark in the game: one entry for everything that can appear on the tray, what it is, how you clear or collect it, and one tip.

The six sweets

Every flavour has its own shape as well as its own colour, so the tray reads in greyscale. Early levels deal four flavours; five from level 5; all six only on late gate levels and in the endless Sweet Tooth tray. Any plain sweet clears the same way: three or more in a row or a column.

• Cherry — a glossy red sphere with a stem and leaf. Orders ask for cherries more than anything else.
• Lemon Drop — a faceted yellow diamond of hard candy. The brightest thing on the tray; when stuck, look for lemons first.
• Mint — a square cream mint with a white swirl. The only square silhouette.
• Blue Razz — a faceted six-sided blue gem. Count the sides against the lemon's four.
• Grape — a puffy purple star gumdrop. Joins on five-colour levels, where free cascades get rarer and specials matter more.
• Toffee — an amber bonbon in a twisted pink wrapper. Only on six-colour trays, the hardest there is.

Specials

A longer line earns a marked sweet. It keeps its flavour and still matches like a plain one; it fires when it is matched, swapped with another special, or caught in any blast. Five beats an L, and an L beats four.

• Striped, row-clearing — made by four in an upright line. Fires across its whole row. A stripe always fires across the line that made it, so it opens a fresh line instead of sweeping where you have just been.
• Striped, column-clearing — made by four in a sideways line. Sweeps its column top to bottom. The hazelnut's best friend: one in a nut's column drops it straight to the floor.
• Wrapped — made by an L or a T. Blows a three-by-three hole, waits for the tray to fill, then blows the same spot again. Every square the blast touches counts as a clear, so one wrapped sweet beside icing can crack several crusts.
• Humbug — made by five in a line. It has no flavour, so it never matches by itself. Swap it with any plain sweet and every sweet of that flavour goes; swap it with a special for a storm. Caught in a blast it takes the flavour with the most on the board. It survives a reshuffle.

Putting two together

Swap two specials that sit next to each other and they go off as one; no line is needed.

• Striped + striped — a cross: a full row and a full column through the swap.
• Striped + wrapped — sugar rush: three rows and three columns at once.
• Wrapped + wrapped — a five-by-five crater.
• Humbug + plain sweet — every sweet of that flavour on the tray.
• Humbug + striped — stripe storm: every sweet of that flavour turns striped, then they all fire.
• Humbug + wrapped — wrap storm: every sweet of that flavour turns wrapped, then they all fire.
• Humbug + humbug — the whole tray.

Blockers and lodgers: jelly, icing, the hazelnut and the frog

None of these are sweets. They are the job.

• Jelly (a covered square) — a sheet of amber glaze on the well, under whatever sweet is sitting there. Clear it by matching on that square, or by covering it with any blast; one layer comes off per clear. The deeper glaze with a second ring inside it is two layers and needs clearing twice. A wrapped sweet fires on the same spot twice, so it clears a two-layer square on its own. Corners are the hardest squares to land a line on: save a striped sweet for the edges, or drop the frog there.
• Icing — a frosted crust on the well, with a hairline for every layer left, up to three. Sweets sit on it and can still be matched, but that does nothing to the crust. Break it by clearing a sweet in one of the four squares next to it; each clear beside it takes one layer off. Specials count as clears in every square they touch, so a row stripe through the middle of a band breaks the icing above and below it in one go.
• Hazelnut — an ingredient, not a sweet: it has no flavour, never matches and never pops, and the job is to get it off the tray. To get rid of one, clear the sweets directly underneath it so it falls; when it reaches the bottom row of its column it slides out of the tray and counts towards the level's total. You can also shove it one square, down or sideways, as long as the sweet it pushes aside makes a line, which is how you get it through the last square. The wells beneath a nut are tinted cream to show its path, and the chevrons along the bottom row are the exits. A chip under the counter shows how many are down out of how many the level wants. Once one goes out, a fresh one drops in at the top of an empty column, never more than two on the tray at once. A column stripe in its column takes it straight to the floor, the bulb points at moves under a nut first, and a reshuffle never moves it. The frog will not land on one.
• The jelly frog — a gummy frog sitting in the tray, wearing one flavour. He never matches and nothing can pop him; a blast washes over him and he stays put. Feed him by clearing sweets of his flavour in one of the four squares around him; he grows as he eats and the chip under the counter says how many more he wants. When he is ready he wears a pink ring: tap him to pick him up, then tap any square, and he hops there and bursts three by three. That hop costs no move. Keep feeding him after he is ready and the burst grows to five by five. After he lands he shrinks and takes a new flavour. He can be swapped along the tray like a sweet, as long as the sweet he displaces lines something up.

What a level asks for

The goal is written under the level name. Meet it before the moves run out and you have passed, whatever the score says.

• Score — reach the target. Every clear in a chain is worth more than the one before it, up to four times; start matches low on the tray so more falls in above.
• Order — clear a set number of one or more flavours. Every sweet of that flavour cleared by any means counts. Humbug plus that flavour fills a big chunk in one swap.
• Jelly — clear every marked square. The frog's square counts as cleared when a blast covers it, so he can never park on the last one.
• Icing — break every frosted well. Work from the middle of a band outwards; a clear between two crusts breaks both.
• Hazelnuts — bring down a set number. Roughly four moves a nut is the budget; column stripes and the frog beat it easily.

Moves, lives and stars

• Moves — every swap that makes a line costs one. A refused swap, an undo and the frog's hop cost nothing. Moves you did not need turn into striped sweets at the end and all go off at once.
• Lives — five. Running out of moves costs one; at zero the run is over. Every level you cleared stays cleared, and a fresh run is one free tap. No timer, nothing to buy.
• Stars — three score bands on the bar, and the only thing the score decides. You can pass with none. A star is kept once earned.

Progress writes to this browser under vcrush:v1. We do not restore a save you wiped. For the tab-versus-app argument see match-3 in a browser tab. For the cash-out question see house rules.