Astral Fusion: The Watermelon Game, Moved to Outer Space

Editor's note: I played this game, and it's very similar to a lot of games where you merge things together to make new objects. But I found the space theme very good and accurate. There is a lot to the game that I did not get to explore, but I recommend playing it. Send me your comments at tim@logicloftgames.com.

Disclosure: Luigi of LuSor Games, who made Astral Fusion, sent us his own guide to the game and the screenshots. We cut it down, rewrote it, and added the editor's note, the chart of the first ten steps and the list of similar games. No money changed hands, and none of the links in this post earn us money.

Astral Fusion is a free Android game. You drop space objects into a tall box, one at a time. When two of the same kind touch, they join into the next, bigger object. Two bits of Cosmic Dust make a Space Pebble. Two Space Pebbles make a Meteoroid. Keep going and you get comets, moons and then planets. Luigi says there are 30 steps in all.

Where to play: Google Play · Website

If that sounds like the Watermelon Game, it is the same idea. Dropping things into a box so that matching ones join up is close to a game type of its own now, part of the wider merge family of games. There is a list of other games like it at the end of this post.

Screenshot: Astral Fusion, LuSor Games.

How a turn works

The next object waits at the top of the screen. You slide it left or right and let go. It falls and lands on whatever is below it.

Then the physics take over. Round objects roll off each other, slip into gaps and bump whatever is next to them. Sometimes a bump pushes two matching objects together and they join without you doing anything.

Every join makes one object that is bigger than either piece. It needs more room, so it shoves its neighbours out of the way. That is where the game gets hard. The box is only so wide, and an Ocean Planet sitting in the wrong spot can bury everything under it.

Screenshot: Astral Fusion, LuSor Games.

Look at the top and bottom of that screenshot. The score is 110,134, and a message says the player just passed 100,000. The bar along the bottom reads Entropy 10% and Pressure 23%. The Game Manual on the main menu explains what those two numbers track.

Combos

Sometimes the new object from a join lands right next to one that matches it. Then those two join as well. That is a combo, and it scores more. The "COMBO x4" in the screenshot means one drop set off four joins in a row.

You can plan for this a little. Keep objects that are one step apart next to each other. When the smaller pair joins, the result ends up beside its twin, and the two of them join too.

The first ten steps

The collection screen shows every object you have found, and how many times you have made each one. Here are the first ten, in order:

This is what I meant about the space theme being accurate. The names are real space objects, and they roughly grow as you go: dust, then a pebble, then rocks, then a moon and the planets. The steps are also grouped into named stages. In the screenshot below, the player is in "Planetary Worlds", with the note "Moons, comets, and planets take shape."

Screenshot: Astral Fusion, LuSor Games.

Luigi's screenshot stops at Ice Planet. The steps after it stay as question marks until you make them, and I did not get that far.

Luigi's three tips

1. Keep some space open. Do not grab the first match you see if it fills the last gap in the box. Open space gives you somewhere to put the next few drops.
2. Keep nearby steps near each other. A Moon next to a Rocky Planet is one join away from being useful. A Moon stuck under three planets is not.
3. Before you drop, think about where the new object will end up. It will be bigger than either piece. The best join is often the one that sets up the next join.

The rest of the game

Outside a run, the menu has the collection, a list of achievements to earn, the Game Manual, and settings for sound, vibration and language. The game is in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. It is free to download and play, and ads pay for it. Right now it is on Android only.

Other games where you drop things and merge them

This kind of game took off in early 2021 with a Chinese browser game whose name means roughly "make a big watermelon". It spread to Japan and then everywhere as the Suika Game ("suika" is Japanese for watermelon). Search for "suika" on Steam today and you get page after page of copies with cats, jelly and anime girls in place of the fruit. These are the ones worth knowing about.

• Suika Game by Aladdin X. The one most people mean. Fruit drops into a box and grows from a cherry up to a watermelon. It is on Nintendo Switch, phones, PlayStation 5 and Steam. The same company also made Suika Game Planet, which moves the game into space: the fruit falls onto a round planet, and you can drop it from any side.
• Cosmic Collapse by Johan Peitz and Vav, published by Apskeppet. Also set in space, and the closest match to Astral Fusion. You drop planets, and they grow from Pluto up to the Sun. It started as a tiny game for the PICO-8, a pretend retro console, and came to Steam in January 2024.
• My Suika: Kyo's Fruit Merge by Watashi Games. A cheap Steam take on the fruit version, with four game modes.
• Merge Fellas by TapMen. A phone game that swaps the fruit for cartoon meme pets, and the goal is a giant capybara. Also on Google Play.

Most of these use fruit or cartoon animals. Astral Fusion uses space objects, and its chain of 30 steps is much longer than a fruit chain from cherry to watermelon. If you like this kind of short, easy-to-learn phone game, our list of the best match-3 and casual puzzle games has more, and Suzette's review of Smash Fest covers another small physics game where you knock piles over with a cannon.

To try Astral Fusion, get it free on Google Play, or read more on Luigi's website.