LemonArcade
Squishy Merge: Collection Battle runs three systems into each other and lets an album hold them together. Pressing a squishy dents it and pays out coins, with faster pressing raising an income multiplier; dragging two identical squishies together merges them into the next toy in their series; and everything you own can be drafted into duels between teams of squishies. The developer, peleo, is explicit about the target: a collection of 72 squishies, split across five series and six rarity levels running from common up to a secret tier, with each newly merged type registering in your album the moment it exists.
That checklist is the real engine, and it changes what merging is for. Most merge games are merge-to-score: Suika-style fruit games and 2048 descendants treat each fusion as points or board progress, and the session resets to zero. Here every merge is merge-to-collect — a census entry. The first time you produce a type, it is recorded permanently, which means progress never rewinds and the game can show you exactly how unfinished you are. A numbered set of 72 does something an endless score cannot: it is finishable, and the gaps in a nearly complete series page are the most persuasive thing on screen. Some types cannot be merged into at all and only arrive in packages, which you open by shaking them with three presses, so filling the last slots means working both acquisition routes.
The theme is borrowed from a real toy shelf. Squishies — slow-rising foam toys that spring back after a squeeze — came out of Japanese kawaii merchandise and became a genuine phenomenon in the late 2010s, when squeeze-and-restore videos turned into a YouTube staple and the toys migrated into classrooms alongside stress balls and, later, pop-its. The game leans into that tactile heritage: the whole economy starts from the act of pressing a toy and watching it deform, the graphics are pastel, and the listing itself promises gentle deformations and no hurry. It is a fidget toy translated to a screen, with a collection stapled on.
The battle layer gives the album a use beyond completeness. You field a team of up to eight squishies, placing some on the front line and holding others in reserve, and up to four duels can play out at once. Each toy carries its own health, damage, attack speed and critical-hit chance, so lineup construction matters more than raw rarity — and the stakes are real, because a defeat costs you one fighter while a win pays coins and a streak pays more. Collecting therefore feeds fighting, fighting funds collecting, and losing gives you a new reason to merge.
The game is published on Playhop with a 12+ rating, plays with a mouse or a finger, and sits under Casual and Puzzle on LemonArcade. There is no timer and no fail state outside the duels; it runs directly in the browser page with nothing to install, which suits school Chromebooks and short sessions equally well.