Orb Combo – Match-3 Orb Drag Puzzle

Orb Combo is a match-3 puzzle with one big difference from the swap-two-gems kind: you pick up a single orb and drag it around the 6 × 5 board for a few seconds. Every orb it passes, diagonals included, swaps places with it, so one long path can rearrange half the board. When you let go, every line of three or more of one colour clears, the orbs above fall and new ones drop in from the top.

The aim is to make several separate matches in one move. Each one is a combo, and the combo count multiplies everything you clear that move.

A run is a fixed number of moves. The move timer only starts when you press an orb, so you can study the board for as long as you like between moves. If it runs out mid-drag, the orb drops where it is.

Your character sets the trade-off: Aurora gets 12 moves of 5 seconds, Chronos 6 of 10 seconds and Zephyr 20 of 3 seconds. Alkaid and Gaia get 11 moves of 5 seconds plus a skill they can use twice between moves. Transmute turns every orb of the rarest colour into the most common one; Shuffle scrambles the board. A skill clears nothing itself; any line it makes clears with your next move.

• Normal: orbs that fall in can form new matches (skyfall combos), which add to the move's combo count.
• Technical: only the matches on the board when you let go count. Refills never chain, and about one refilled orb in eight is a grey Jammer.
• Ranking: one setup for everyone, 5 seconds a move and no character or skills. You get 10 moves with 6 colours, 5 with 3 and 2 with 2.

Play with all 6 colours (Fire, Water, Wood, Light, Dark and Heart), or warm up with 3 or 2, where matches come far more easily.

Each orb is worth 100 points, and every orb past the third in one match adds 25% to that match. Three shapes pay extra: exactly 4 orbs is a Four (×1.5), 5 in a plus a Cross (×1.75) and a whole row of 6 a Row (×2). Touching orbs of one colour form one combo, so an L or T shape counts once.

Every combo past the first then adds 25% to the move, so 5 combos double it. The counter keeps running while orbs fall, so each later wave of skyfall is multiplied by the running total. Before that multiplier, a plain three is worth 300, four in a line 750, a Cross about 1,310 and a Row 2,100.

• Plan the route before you press. The clock is stopped until you touch an orb. Your path works like a conveyor: each orb you cross shifts one cell back towards where you started, and the orb in hand ends where you let go. A diagonal step is a single swap, handy on a short timer.
• Count each colour first. Thirty orbs allow at most ten three-orb combos from your own solve. Two orbs of a colour cannot clear, and four or five can only make one combo, so put them all in it.
• Bigger beats split. Because each extra orb adds 25%, two threes of one colour stacked side by side merge into one six worth 1,050, which beats two separate threes even after the extra combo is counted.
• Mind the shape thresholds. A fifth orb in a straight line scores 750, the same as four, so bend it into a Cross or use it elsewhere. A seventh touching orb turns a 2,100 Row into a 1,400 line.
• Use Jammers on Technical. They drag like any orb, and three or more clear as a combo. They score nothing but still raise that move's combo count.
• Keep a free match on Technical. A line the refill lines up stays put and clears with your next move. Route around it and it is an extra combo.

Picking up an orb to “have a look” starts the timer and spends the move, even if you let go without matching anything.

Skills are easy to waste. Transmute helps when the rarest colour has too few orbs to match, but if a colour is missing from the board entirely, it counts as the rarest and Transmute changes nothing. Save Shuffle for a board that offers nothing.