COMBILINGS

Combilings Strategy Guide

Combilings looks simple: drag across combilings of the same colour and let go. Underneath there is a scoring system with a few hard rules, and knowing them is the difference between level five and level twenty.

Points are not about how fast you tap

Every clear scores path length × 100 × combo multiplier × length bonus. Three things matter there, and only one of them is obvious.

The combo multiplier starts at ×1 and climbs by 0.5 with every clear that keeps the combo alive. It stops at ×8, which you reach at combo 15. Before that cap existed, a long run could reach ×50 and the score became meaningless. Now the ceiling arrives quickly and the game asks you to earn points a different way.

That other way is the length bonus. Each combiling beyond the second adds 15%. A path of six is worth almost five times a pair, not three times. At full combo, a pair scores 1,600 and a six scores 7,680.

Why pairs stopped being the best move

Linking two combilings is fast, and for a while that made it the optimal strategy: the combo bar rose three times quicker than it did for a player making thoughtful long paths. Pairs now keep the combo alive but do not increase it, and in Survival Mode they do not add time either. Use them to unblock the board, not to farm it.

The three boosts

Boosts are created by the length of the path, and they replace the last combiling you released on.

• Four in a row: Color Bomb. It takes the colour of the path that created it. When it goes off, every combiling of that colour on the board explodes.
• Five in a row: White Bomb. A wildcard that clears everything in the surrounding 3×3 regardless of colour.
• Six or more: Atomic. Clears the whole board and scores all of it.

The Color Bomb is a decision, not a reward

A Color Bomb connects to any colour, so it never gets stranded. That means you choose when to use it, and the choice matters more than anything else in the game.

Detonating a yellow bomb when there are three yellows on the board clears three. Waiting until the board is crowded with yellow can clear ten or more, and in Mission Mode that can finish a level on its own. The board refills after every move, so patience genuinely pays.

The Super Combo

From combo ×3 upwards, a clear of three or more spreads automatically to another connected group of the same colour elsewhere on the board, taking as many as your path did. It is free damage, and it is the main reason to keep the combo bar alive between moves rather than pausing to plan.

The bar empties in 3.5 seconds. That is the real clock of the game.

Mission Mode

Each level picks one colour and asks for a quantity. Level one wants 24 in 30 moves; by level ten it is about 51 in 23 moves; from level 13 onwards it settles at 60 in 22.

The board never holds more than six or seven of the mission colour at once — that is deliberate, so a level can never be finished in a single wave. You clear what is there and wait for the refill.

• Chase the colour, not the easy path. A long chain in the wrong colour scores points but does not move the mission forward, and the mission is what ends the level.
• Blocked cells appear from level five. They shrink the board and make long paths harder, which is the real difficulty curve, not the numbers.
• More colours arrive over time. Four up to level four, five up to ten, six up to eighteen, seven after that. Each new colour makes the mission colour rarer.

Survival Mode

Thirty seconds on the clock. Every combo of three or more adds 1.5 seconds, capped at thirty — you can top up the clock, never bank it.

The important rule is invisible: the clock accelerates. After one minute it runs 40% faster, after two minutes nearly double. No matter how well you play, the drain eventually outruns what you can replace. A good run lasts between two and four minutes.

• Chains beat single big paths. Each qualifying clear adds time, so three paths of four give more clock than one path of six.
• Never stop to think. The combo bar empties in 3.5 seconds and losing the multiplier costs more than a bad move.
• Spend the Atomic early. Holding it while the clock accelerates usually means dying with it unused.

Coins

You start with none. Completing a level pays 10, and every other source — the daily bonus, installing the game, turning on reminders, inviting a friend — is a one-off or a once-a-day thing. Coins buy a second attempt when you run out of moves: 150 for the first retry, then 150 more each time.

Because the cost escalates and the income does not, coins are a safety net for a level you were close to finishing, not a way to play forever. Spend them on a level where the mission was nearly complete, not on a level that went wrong from the first move.