I've been a mobile gamer for years. Not hardcore — just someone who picks up their phone on a commute, during a lunch break, or at the end of a long day and wants something that actually feels good to play.

The problem is, almost everything in the puzzle game category is the same. A thin mechanic wrapped in a monetization strategy. Ads every 90 seconds. An energy system designed to frustrate you into paying. Progression that feels artificial because it is — the game is slowing you down on purpose.

I kept downloading games, playing for a day, and deleting them. Not because I lost interest in puzzle games, but because none of them respected my time.

So I stopped looking for the game I wanted and started building it.

What is MerjUp?

MerjUp is an arcade can-merging puzzle game for iOS and Android. The mechanic is simple to learn: you tap to fire a can upward, slide to angle your shot, and when two cans of the same type collide, they merge into the next tier. Chain enough merges and you climb from the lowest tier (Duo) all the way to the top (Omega).

Eight tiers. Three game modes. One goal: keep climbing.

The three modes exist because different moods call for different experiences:

• Story is a 100-level campaign where you're recovering the Core. Each level introduces new board layouts and merge challenges.
• Classic is time attack — you have a score target and a clock. Precision and speed both matter.
• Survival is endless. Merge fast before the stack crosses the line. See how long you can last.

Why cans?

Honestly? The aesthetic came from thinking about what makes a satisfying merge feel satisfying. There's something visually chunky and physical about a can. When two of them collide and become something bigger and stranger-looking, it reads immediately. You feel the tier-up without needing a tutorial.

The progression tier names — Duo, Tres, Quanttor, Quinque, Octo, Hexa, Septa, Omega — are loosely numerical (two, three, four, five, eight, six, seven, and then the legendary finish). They give the game a naming vocabulary that's weird enough to be memorable.

Building the web presence

The game needed a home before it was on the App Store. I built the landing page in Next.js 14 with the App Router, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn/ui components. The waitlist is backed by MongoDB, and joining it fires a welcome email through Resend.

I wanted the site to feel like the game — dark, kinetic, with a neon palette and cans that float. Framer Motion handles the animations. The cans on the hero section literally float and rotate. The background plays music the moment you interact with the page.

The whole stack: Next.js + Bun + MongoDB + Resend + Vercel. Fast to build, zero ops overhead.

What I actually learned

The mechanic has to be the reward. Every time I played a session and felt nothing, it was because the merge didn't feel like anything. Getting the physics — the timing of the collision, the visual of the merge — to feel crisp was where most of the design iteration happened.

Waitlists are underrated for solo devs. Building the list in public gives you a real signal. The number of people who sign up before launch is the most honest feedback you can get before anyone has played the game.

Ship the web presence early. The landing page exists at MerjUp now, before the game is live on the App Store. That means Google starts indexing the name, early players can find us, and I have somewhere to point people when I talk about the game.

Avoid the feature trap. My first instinct was to add more — more modes, more mechanics, more can types. The design discipline of MerjUp is that the core loop is the product. Everything else is window dressing until the toss-aim-merge rhythm feels perfect.

Early access is open now. Join the waitlist at MerjUp and you'll get 200 bonus coins when the game drops on iOS and Android.

If you're building something in the mobile game space, I'd love to hear about it — drop a comment below.