Disclosure: I develop Iridis, which is last on this list. It is placed last because it has the fewest ratings. The list is ordered by rating count, not by my opinion.
"Merge puzzle" on the App Store is four different games wearing one keyword. Number merge is the 2048 family: tiles double when they meet. Sort puzzles (Water Sort, Hexa Sort) do not merge anything in the 2048 sense; you move things until each container is uniform. Merge-2 story games (Merge Mansion) use merging as the engine of a long meta-game with energy timers and events. Physics merge (the watermelon game) is about dropping and chaos. Iridis is a fifth, smaller lineage: tap a group of same-colour tiles and the whole group fuses into one tile of the next colour, which makes big groups worth far more than pairs.
The second thing lists skip is what the game charges you. Every game here is free to download; the difference is whether it charges time (energy or lives that refill on a timer), attention (interstitial ads between rounds), or money once. A story merge game charges time by design. A sorting game usually charges attention. Iridis charges attention in the free tier and money once to stop.
| Game | US ratings | Type | Core loop | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water Sort Puzzle (IEC) | 324,236 · 4.7★ | Sort | Pour coloured water between glasses until each glass is one colour | You want the most-played sorting puzzle |
| Hexa Sort | 218,683 · 4.7★ | Sort | Stack and sort hexagonal tiles by colour; merges when a stack is uniform | You like sorting with a spatial twist |
| Merge Mansion | 200,927 · 4.6★ | Merge-2 story | Merge pairs of items to restore a mansion; story, energy, events | You want a long-running story game |
| Water Sort Puzzle: Get Color | 137,947 · 4.8★ | Sort | Water sort positioned as relaxation, thousands of levels | Same as Water Sort, calmer framing |
| Drag n Merge | 86,305 · 4.4★ | Number merge | Drag matching number blocks together; wooden look; online play with friends | You want 2048 with friends |
| Drop The Number | 84,032 · 4.7★ | Number merge | Drop numbered tiles into columns; 2048 rules in a falling-block board | You like 2048 but want gravity |
| Fruit Merge – Juicy Melon | 44,700 · 4.6★ | Physics merge | Drop fruit; identical fruits merge into bigger ones (the 'watermelon game') | You want physics and chaos |
| 2048 (Ketchapp) | 37,994 · 4.4★ | Number merge | The 2014 swipe-merge classic, unofficial version | You want 2048 and do not care whose |
| 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli | 30,147 · 4.8★ | Number merge | The official original: swipe, merge, undo, statistics | You want the real one, clean |
| M2 Blocks | 16,045 · 4.9★ | Number merge | Send number blocks upward, stack, chain merges | You want number-merge with chains |
| Color Merge Puzzle | 3,819 · 4.5★ | Colour mixing | Drag colours onto a canvas and mix them toward a target | You want colour theory, not tiers |
| Iridis (author's own game) | new, no ratings yet | Tap-to-merge colour | Tap groups of same-colour tiles to fuse them into the next colour of the spectrum, red to violet; timed combos, ticking bombs, 75 authored levels, endless, one seeded daily board with a global leaderboard | You want merge with authored levels and a daily duel |
Ten minutes of calm: Water Sort Puzzle (either one). Hundreds of thousands of people cannot be wrong about a nap-time game.
The original: 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli. It has undo and statistics and nothing else, which is the point.
A long game with a story: Merge Mansion. Know that it is built around energy timers; that is the genre, not a flaw.
Merge with authored levels, combos and a daily leaderboard: Iridis. Seventy-five hand-made boards with pinch points and boss boards, a combo window that shrinks as you climb, bombs, and one seeded board a day that is identical for everyone. I built it, so weigh that accordingly.
Rating counts and averages are from the US App Store via Apple's public iTunes lookup API, read on 12 September 2026, rounded to one decimal. Type and core-loop descriptions are from each game's own store listing. Nothing here was sponsored. Corrections: necatidogrul7@gmail.com.
Download Iridis on the App StoreFree with ads · iPhone · iOS 17 or later · works offline