Magnet Rocks

Setup

A 6×6 tray of shallow dimples, each of which can seat one stone. Two players, ten stones each.

Every stone is magnetic and every dimple holds it in place — up to a point.

How to play

On your turn, place one of your stones in any empty dimple. Then the physics runs: if the pull from nearby stones exceeds what its dimple can hold, a stone breaks free and moves, and anything it strikes is freed in turn.

The result is a chain reaction, settled on our servers so both players watch the same one. Stones that end up touching form a clump, and every stone in the clump goes back into the hand of the player who placed the stone that started it — including the stone they just placed, and including stones their opponent placed.

A placement that clumps nothing simply seats the stone and passes the turn.

Controls

Tap an empty dimple to place a stone in it. That is the only control in the game — there is no dragging, no aiming and no power. Where you put the stone is the whole of your move.

A dimple that already holds a stone does not respond, and the tray is inert while it is your opponent's turn. The rail above the tray says whose turn it is and how many stones each of you has left to place.

Once the stone lands, the physics runs on its own and you watch it. Nothing you do during the cascade changes it: it was settled on the server before the first frame was drawn, which is why both players see the identical chain reaction.

With Reduce Motion switched on in your phone's accessibility settings, the cascade resolves without the travel — the stones simply arrive where the server put them, and the result is exactly the same.

Every dimple announces its column and row to a screen reader, and says whether it is empty or taken, so the tray can be played without seeing it.

The tray does not mirror in Arabic. Column one is on the left in both languages.

Scoring

There are no captures to count. What decides the match is how many stones you still have to place: you start with ten, every placement costs one, and a clump you set off puts every stone in it back into your hand.

A clump also empties the dimples it came from, so a large cascade does two things at once: it refills the hand of the player who caused it, and it reopens the tray for both players.

On your profile a win pays 16 points, a draw 6 and a loss 2 — priced with the short abstracts rather than with the long games.

Magnet Rocks is rated and moves the same ladder as chess. It is turn-based and hides nothing, so a result belongs on that ladder even though the outcome comes out of a physics solver.

Rating moves only in an online match between exactly two people. Practice against the bot and games on one phone pay nothing and change nothing, and a turn left unplayed for two minutes is forfeited.

Winning

The first player to place their last stone without setting off a clump wins at once. Placing your last stone into a clump does not win: the clump comes back into your hand and play goes on.

If a match reaches 120 placements it ends there: whoever has fewer stones left to place wins, and an equal count is a draw.

Leaving the match forfeits it, and a turn left unplayed for two minutes is forfeited too.

Tips

An orthogonal neighbour is fatal and a single diagonal neighbour is safe — but two diagonal neighbours together pull hard enough to break a stone free. Pulls add up, so read the whole neighbourhood, not just the nearest stone.

Do not place next to stones you cannot afford to clump. The player who sets a chain off takes every stone in it back into their own hand, including the stones they had already placed.

The tray fills faster than it looks. Around the middle of a game the safe dimples run out, and the player who still has one to use is usually the player who empties their hand first.