Block puzzle glossary

Core terms

Board

The playing grid. In Cascade Puzzle it is 6 columns wide and 12 rows tall.

Block

A single coloured piece. There are six types, each with its own shape as well as its own colour: heart, star, circle, diamond, triangle, and square.

Swap

Exchanging two horizontally adjacent blocks. The only move in the game. Swapping a block into an empty cell is legal, and every swap costs a move whether or not it matches.

Match

Three or more blocks of the same type in a straight horizontal or vertical line. Matches clear. Diagonals never match.

Gravity

After a clear, every block above the gap falls straight down. Gaps are never refilled from the top, which is what makes cascades possible.

Cascade

Any sequence where clearing one match causes falls that create another match. The game is named after it.

Combo

A single clear that removes more than the minimum three blocks — for example a line of five, or one swap completing a row and a column at once.

Chain

Several separate clears in sequence, each caused by the fall from the one before. The counter starts at x2 on the first linked clear. See chain reactions.

Setup move

A deliberate swap that matches nothing, made to reposition a block for a later match. Tight move limits budget for these.

Pending match

Two same-type blocks positioned so that a fall will complete them into a line. The building block of a planned chain.

Move limit

The exact number of swaps a puzzle allows. Every level is verified solvable within its limit before shipping.

Real-time versus terms

These apply only to versus mode, where the stack rises and there is no move limit.

Rise

The continuous upward push of new blocks from the bottom of the board.

Raise

Manually pushing the stack up ahead of schedule, to get more blocks to work with.

Garbage

A solid slab dropped on your board by an opponent's combo or chain. It cannot be matched directly; clearing a normal match beside it peels one row into ordinary blocks.

Telegraph

The brief warning shown before incoming garbage lands, giving you time to prepare a clear.

Stop time

The pause in your own rise granted by a clear — longer for chains than combos, and longest of all for a clear made while topped out.

Topping out

A block being pushed past the top row. In versus this loses the match.

Danger

The warning state when your stack climbs into the top three rows.

Skill chain

Extending a chain by manually swapping a block that fell from an earlier clear into a new match, rather than letting the chain resolve on its own.

Genre terms you may see elsewhere

Panel de Pon / Tetris Attack

The 1995 Nintendo puzzle game that established this format: horizontal swaps, a rising stack, and chains that send garbage. Cascade Puzzle's versus mode follows its rules and timings.

Match 3

The broad genre of games where lining up three same-type pieces clears them. Cascade Puzzle is a match-3 game, but a swap-and-gravity one rather than the more common refill-from-above kind.

Deterministic

Having no randomness. Cascade Puzzle's move-limited levels are deterministic, so the same board and the same moves always give the same result — which makes resetting a free way to learn a board.