What is NOVA — Radial Gravity Puzzle
NOVA is played on a disc of four rings and eight sectors. Tap a sector and a coloured orb falls inward, stopping on the first free cell it meets. Put three or more orbs of one colour together, around a ring or stacked across rings, and they detonate. Whatever sat outside the gap slides inward, which often forms another match. You also hold three units of energy: drag along a ring to turn it one cell, spending one unit per step. Detonations give that energy back.
The board wraps. Each ring is a closed loop, so sector eight touches sector one and matches appear across a seam you were not watching. Gravity points at the core instead of down, so the inner cells fill first and are the hardest to reach again. Rotation is what makes this a puzzle rather than a reflex test: you can move an entire ring, but only while the meter holds charge, and charge returns only when you clear something. Running dry on a crowded disc is how most rounds end.
How to play
- Tap or click a sector to release the current orb. It falls toward the core and settles on the innermost free cell of that sector.
- Match three or more orbs of the same colour. Cells count as neighbours around a ring and across rings, and the ring loops back on itself.
- Drag along a ring to rotate it one cell at a time. Each step costs one energy; every group you clear returns one, up to a maximum of three.
- Keep space on the disc. When all thirty-two cells are filled the round ends and your score is final.
Strategies that work
- Clear near the core when you have the choice. Gravity pulls inward, so a detonation on the inner rings drops the whole sector down and frees room above it. An outer clear only empties its own cells.
- Play for chains. The first detonation after a drop scores at one times, the collapse that follows at two times, the next at three. One collapse that resolves twice beats two separate matches by a wide margin.
- Spend energy only on rotations that clear something. A turn costs one of your three units, and the unit comes straight back when the group goes off. Tidying the board without a detonation leaves you unable to move when it matters.
- Count to the star. Every fourteenth piece is a star orb, and it wipes its entire ring and sector for forty points plus fourteen per orb removed. Save it for a crowded ring, never an empty one.
- Leave a landing strip for debris. Every few drops the game pushes extra orbs in from outside, and the gap shrinks from ten drops to five as your level rises, with two orbs at once from level five. Keep one sector with outer-ring space free.
A little history
NOVA is an original game built for this site, so it has no earlier version and no invention story to tell. What it does have is two borrowed ideas. The first is the colour-matching falling-block puzzle, a long-established genre in which pieces enter a bounded field, settle under a fixed gravity and vanish when enough of one kind touch. The second is the polar grid, where a cell is described by a radius and an angle rather than a row and a column, the coordinate system mathematics uses for anything that turns. Combining them changes the geometry: rows become rings that close on themselves, so there are no edges to hide a bad placement, and columns become sectors converging on one point, which makes the innermost cells scarce. The match check itself is a flood fill, the same connected-region search used in paint software, run on a grid whose horizontal axis wraps around.
Frequently asked questions
How does a round end?
When all thirty-two cells hold an orb. There is no timer and no lives. Tapping a full sector is simply refused rather than costing you the game, so you get a clear warning before the disc closes up.
How are points awarded?
A group scores ten points per orb, plus five more for each orb beyond the third, multiplied by its place in the chain. A star orb scores forty plus fourteen for every orb it removes. Levels arrive at fixed score thresholds and add colours: four at the start, five from level three, six from level five.
What happens when the energy meter is empty?
Any ring holding orbs stops turning, the meter flashes and the ring springs back. You can still drop orbs, and the next detonation refills a unit. A completely empty ring always rotates for free.
