Lantern Season
Match lanterns and they rise. The sky keeps everything you have let go of.
What it is
A seven by seven board of coloured lanterns. Swap two that are next to each other to line up three or more, they light, and they lift off the board. Everything above them falls in.
You already know how to play this. That is deliberate — nothing has been added to make it clever.
The sky is the point
Cleared lanterns do not vanish. They rise into the sky above the board and stay there for the rest of the night, drifting. The ones that went up first are high and small and dim; the ones you just released are close and bright.
By the end of a good night the sky is full, and all of it is yours.
A night is twenty moves
Each night has a target. Reach it and the night rises, the sky clears and you get twenty fresh moves for a harder one. Fall short and the run is over.
A move is only spent on a swap that actually makes a line — try something that does not work and the lanterns slide back and it costs you nothing. Match four or more and you leave a beacon, and a beacon caught in any later match lights its whole row and column at once.
What it does not do
No lives, no timer counting down at you, no currency, no unlocks, no daily anything, and nothing to come back for tomorrow. It also has no tutorial, because a game like this should not need one.
The board will never leave you stuck either — if no legal move remains it quietly redeals what is already there.
How to play
- Swap two lanternsDrag one into the other
On a desktop, the mouse drags exactly like a finger, or the arrow keys move a selection and swap.
What isn't settled yet
The difficulty was measured rather than guessed, and the first sitting reached night five. What has not been checked is whether a cascade resolving feels like a reward or just like the board refilling — which is the difference between a match-three worth playing and one that merely works.
Credits and licences
Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover art was composited from a base image created with Manus.
Lantern Season is original work by Launchway Games.