How to Play Combinaut

The one rule

You begin with four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Drag one onto another and they combine into something new. That new thing goes into your catalogue and can be combined with anything else, including itself.

Earth + Water = Plant

There is no score, no timer, no lives and no ending. The catalogue is the whole game, and the only question is how far out you can get.

Controls

• Mouse: drag a tile onto another to combine.
• Touch: drag works, and so does tapping one tile and then tapping another. Both are supported at once, so you can use whichever suits the hand you have free. Pinch to zoom still works everywhere, including on the board.
• Keyboard: tab to a tile, press Enter or Space to select it, then Enter on a second tile to combine. Delete removes a tile, Escape cancels a selection, and Ctrl+Z undoes.

Your progress

Everything you discover is saved in your own browser. Close the tab, come back tomorrow, and your catalogue is still there. We do not store it on a server, which also means we cannot see it and it does not follow you to another device. There is no account to make.

Clearing the board does not touch your catalogue. Reset does, and it asks first, because it is the one thing here that cannot be undone.

When something has not been discovered yet

Sometimes a pairing comes back as not catalogued. That does not mean it is impossible: it means nobody has made it yet and our generator has not reached it. Those pairings are queued and usually available the next day. Try something else in the meantime; nothing is lost.

Getting further

• Combine an element with itself. It is the most commonly missed move and it opens up a lot early on.
• Broad, general things combine with more than specific ones. A material tends to be more useful than a named object.
• When you are stuck, go back two or three steps rather than one. The interesting branch is usually earlier than you think.
• The recipe database shows what makes anything, and what anything makes.
• The questions and answers cover what people ask most, and about explains what the game is and how it is paid for.