Crucible

About Crucible

Crucible is a merge tower defense on the forge floor. Casting pours a crucible of random metal onto a random empty anvil; drag two of a kind together and they fuse one rung up the ladder, tin to copper to bronze, iron, silver, gold, and at last star-steel. Every fusing overflows in a ring of molten metal that no armor blunts. The metals run in a fixed vein, the same for everyone, so the community board compares like with like. Free in your browser, no ads, no sign-up.

How to play

Cast while the road is quiet and fuse matching metals to climb the ladder; each cast grows dearer, so every pour is a real decision. The slag-born march the serpentine past your anvils: clinkers shrug off weak pours, bellows quicken every marcher near them, and slagwains simply take a great deal of killing. Gold and star-steel splash where they strike, and a well-timed merge is a weapon in itself, since the overflow ignores armor entirely. Ten embers keep the hearth; when the last goes out, the firing ends.

Controls

• CastPour a random metal on a random anvil
• Drag one crucible onto its matchFuse them a rung up the ladder
• Tap one, then its matchFuse without dragging
• Tap a crucibleSee its reach, or sell it
• CCast
• SpaceSound the horn early

Tips

Middle anvils reach more road than corner ones, so drag the merge onto the anvil you want the new metal standing on; the drop chooses the ground. Hold a pair of matching metals unfused when an armored wave is due, then fuse them as the clinkers pass: the overflow lands where the pour cannot. Selling a stray tin late in the firing is often better than letting it hold an anvil a silver could stand on.