Watermelon Picnic

What you do

Watermelon Picnic is a fruit merge game played in a wicker basket on a gingham blanket. Wren the bluebird carries each fruit over the basket, and you choose where she lets go. Two of the same fruit that touch merge into the next one up a ladder of eleven: blueberry, cherry, strawberry, lemon, plum, orange, apple, peach, coconut, melon and watermelon. Only the five smallest fruits are ever dropped, so every big fruit is one you built. The fruit are big, round and bouncy, so they roll into gaps and knock each other around, and a careless drop can bury a small fruit under a big one. Keep the pile below the dashed line, plan for the next fruit in the preview, and see how far up the ladder you can get.

• Eleven fruits with faces that blink, watch your aim, look worried near the line and smile when they merge.
• Real bounce and roll: fruit settle into gaps, and a merge can set off a chain of merges.
• A fruit ladder that fills in as you make each fruit for the first time, with your best score and biggest fruit saved in this browser.

How to play

1. Press Play. Wren the bluebird holds the next fruit over the basket, and the Next box shows the one after it.
2. Aim along the top of the basket and drop. A dashed guide shows where the fruit will land and turns gold when it will land on a fruit of the same kind.
3. Two of the same fruit that touch merge into the next fruit up the ladder and score points: the bigger the new fruit, the more points. A merge can make a fruit that touches its own twin, which merges again in a chain.
4. The ladder goes blueberry, cherry, strawberry, lemon, plum, orange, apple, peach, coconut, melon, watermelon. Only blueberries to plums are dropped; everything bigger has to be merged.
5. Two watermelons that touch roll out of the basket together for 1,000 points and leave a lot of room.
6. If you wait six seconds, Wren lets go of the fruit by herself where she is and flutters to a new spot. Each fruit she lets go by herself makes her next wait shorter, and a ring around the fruit shows the last three seconds.
7. Fruit that has settled with its top above the dashed line starts a two-second countdown. If the pile is still over the line when it ends, the picnic is over.

Controls

• Touch: slide a finger across the basket to aim and lift it to drop.
• Mouse: move over the basket to aim and click to drop.
• Keyboard: Left and Right arrows or A and D aim, and Space, Enter, or the Down arrow drops.
• Toolbar: pause, restart, sound, help, and fullscreen.

Tips worth knowing

• Keep the biggest fruit low along one wall and build down the ladder away from it, so each merge lands next to the fruit it grows into.
• Never drop a fruit on top of a smaller one. A small fruit buried under a big one can stay stuck for the rest of the picnic.
• Check the Next box before you drop. If the next fruit matches one on the pile, leave a spot open beside it.
• Drop small fruit into the gaps between big ones. They roll down and fill space a big fruit cannot.
• Fast drops pile up faster than they merge. Take a breath when the pile nears the line.

Accessibility

• Playable with touch, mouse, or keyboard alone: arrows aim and Space drops.
• Pause from the toolbar at any time; the basket, Wren's wait and the countdown freeze. Sound is optional, and every merge, warning and the end of a picnic also shows on screen.
• Big merges, watermelon pairs, the full-basket warning and, when playing by keyboard, each drop and the next fruit are announced to screen readers.
• Each fruit has its own shape and markings as well as its own color.
• Reduced motion turns off screen shake, squashes and sways, and keeps juice and confetti small and close to where they start.

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