Everything you need in one read — controls, animals, friendships, scoring, lives, and the level curve.
You are arranging animals into a small wooden house. Each turn a piece falls from the top of the board and you decide where it lands and which animal it is. You score points by stacking three of the same animal in a vertical column (a POP) and bonus points by completely filling a horizontal row (a CLEAR).
The complication is that not every animal gets along. If you place a piece that ends up touching a clashing animal — vertically or horizontally — that piece is rejected, the level fights you for it, and you lose a life. Run out of lives in a level and the game ends.
Your highest score is saved in your browser between sessions, so the game remembers your record after you close the tab.
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Move piece left | A or ← |
| Move piece right | D or → |
| Cycle animal type | W or ↑ |
| Soft drop (faster fall) | Hold S or ↓ |
| Hard drop (instant) | Space |
Touch buttons appear below the board on mobile screens. Swipe gestures across the play field also work — left and right swipes move the piece, an upward swipe cycles the animal, and a downward swipe is a hard drop. Tap the action button to confirm a piece if you prefer that to swiping.
| Piece | Color | Friends With | Clashes With |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐶 Dog | Blue | Dog, Mouse | Cat |
| 🐱 Cat | Orange | Cat only | Dog, Mouse |
| 🐭 Mouse | Pink | Dog, Mouse | Cat |
| 🧱 Wall | Brick | Everyone | Nothing |
When a falling piece lands, the game checks the four cells touching it (above, below, left, right). If any of those cells contains a clashing animal, the piece is rejected before it settles into the grid. You see a red flash, the piece animates away, and you lose a life.
Diagonal neighbors do not count. A cat next to a mouse is bad. A cat directly above-and-one-over from a mouse is fine.
You earn points two ways:
Walls count toward row clears but not toward vertical pops — three walls in a column will simply sit there. They're scaffolding, not scoring pieces.
Consecutive scoring events without a wasted piece in between trigger a combo multiplier. Each link in the chain raises the multiplier on the next event. A single pop is worth its base points; a pop into a chain reaction can be worth several times that. The combo banner appears at the top of the board when a combo is active.
You start each level with a fresh stock of lives. The number drops as the level number rises — early levels are forgiving, late levels punish even one bad placement.
| Level | Starting Lives |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5 |
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 2 |
| 5 and beyond | 1 |
Lives reset every time you advance a level. This means a level-5 run is a one-mistake gauntlet — but if you survive, level 6 starts with a fresh single life and the cycle continues. The game becomes a question of how many one-life levels you can string together in a row.
Each level shortens the time you have to position a piece before it locks. Early levels feel meditative and you can plan two pieces ahead. By level 4, you're making placement decisions with seconds to spare. By level 7, the falling speed is noticeable enough that hard-drops become a tactical choice rather than a convenience.
The animal frequency also shifts. Early on, walls appear regularly enough that you can sculpt the board. Later, the game leans into more dogs, cats and mice with fewer wall pieces — meaning you have to be more careful about where clashes will form.
The mechanics are straightforward, but high-level play is not. Head to the Strategy guide for the tactics that separate a 600-point run from a 6,000-point run. Or read the design notes on the About page to learn why the game exists in the first place.
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