Match the crystals. Route the light. Wake the engine.
Play Astrolathe — free, in your browser
A gem-matching puzzle built around a machine. Swap neighbouring crystals to line up three or more, and the ones you clear on an engraved conduit send their light along it to a lens on the frame of the board. A full lens fires: a Flare clears its whole conduit, a Prism turns gems to its own colour, a Forge cuts new crystals, a Surge doubles every lens. Some lenses have no conduit at all and are fed only by the lenses linked to them; some stay dark until the one before them has fired. Twenty hand-built levels across the four wings of an ancient observatory, each with its own objectives — purge creeping tarnish, crack gilded seals, collect a family of crystal, wake a lens or a whole sequence of them — rated in stars, with a mastery goal for each. Plus a Daily Alignment: one generated board a day, the same for everyone, on a daily leaderboard.
Swap two neighbouring crystals to line up three or more of the same family. They clear, the crystals above fall, and new ones drop in — which can set off a cascade. A swap that makes no match springs back and costs nothing. If the board ever runs out of moves, it reshuffles itself and tells you so.
There are six families — Solar, Verdant, Tidal, Astral, Ember and Lunar — and each has its own cut and its own inner mark, so you never have to tell them apart by colour. High-contrast symbols are in Settings.
Brass cells are a conduit: an engraved channel running from the board to a lens on the frame. A crystal cleared on a conduit charges that lens, and crystals of the lens’s own family charge it double — the little crystal on the lens shows which family that is. A full lens fires, at most once a turn.
Lenses do different things. A Flare clears every crystal on its own conduit. A Prism turns crystals all over the board into its family. A Forge cuts Meridian crystals out of ordinary ones. A Surge doubles every lens’s charge for three turns. A lens linked to another by a dotted gold line sends it one charge, plus everything it was overfilled by, each time it fires — that is the only way to wake a Heart, which has no conduit of its own. A dark lens with a keyhole takes no charge until the lens before it has fired.
Four in a line forges a Meridian crystal, which sweeps a whole row or column. A T, an L or a cross forges a Halo, which bursts everything within two steps. Five in a line forges a Singularity: swap it with any crystal to take every crystal of that family. Swap two forged crystals together and they combine — a Cross Meridian, a Great Cross, a Corona, a storm, or, with two Singularities, an Eclipse that clears the board and fills every lens.
Each level sets its own objectives — a score, a lens to fire, a family to collect, tarnish to purge, seals to crack, cascades to make — within a move limit. Unused moves are banked as points when you win. Stars are awarded on score, and every level has a mastery goal for finishing with moves to spare. Levels are saved after every move.
The Daily Alignment is one generated board a day, the same for everyone, turning over at midnight UTC. You have a fixed number of moves and your score is your result; only your first attempt each day is ranked, and it resumes if you close the tab.
Astrolathe is a free gem-matching puzzle game that runs in your browser. You swap crystals to line up three or more, as in any match-three game, but the board is part of a machine: crystals cleared on engraved conduits charge lenses on the frame, and full lenses fire to clear, convert or forge crystals. There are twenty levels and a daily board.
Yes. No login, no download, no lives or timers to wait out, and nothing to buy. Every level is unlocked by playing the one before it.
A conduit is a path of brass cells engraved under the crystals, running to a lens on the edge of the board. Clear a crystal on a conduit and it charges that lens, double if the crystal is the lens’s own family. A full lens fires — at most once a turn — and does what its type does: a Flare clears its conduit, a Prism recolours crystals, a Forge makes new special crystals and a Surge doubles all charge for three turns.
Lenses with no conduit of their own are fed by the lenses linked to them with a dotted gold line. Each time a feeding lens fires, it sends one charge along the link plus every point it was overfilled by, so overfilling a feeder with its own family of crystal is the fastest way to wake it.
Four in a line makes a Meridian crystal, which clears its row or column. A T, L or cross shape makes a Halo, which bursts everything within two steps. Five in a line makes a Singularity, which takes every crystal of the family you swap it with. Swapping two special crystals together makes a combination that is stronger than either.
The board reshuffles itself, keeps your sealed and special crystals where they are, and tells you it has done so. It never costs a move.
One generated board a day, the same for every player, turning over at midnight UTC. You have a fixed number of moves and your score goes on the daily leaderboard. Only your first attempt is ranked, and if you close the tab it resumes where you left off.
Both. On a phone, drag a crystal toward its neighbour or tap one and then the other. With a keyboard, the arrow keys move a cursor, Space picks a crystal up and an arrow swaps it. Every family has its own shape and inner symbol, so colour is never the only way to tell them apart, and Settings has high-contrast symbols and reduced motion.
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