Published by Kestrel Publishing · Version 1.0 ·
iPhone with iOS 15 and later, Android 8.0 and later
(com.kestrelpublishing.exolab)
You run a research station on a small island with three Labs: Circuit, Compound and Containment. Each Lab has a chamber of volatile material that is fed from above. Clear matching material to keep the chamber below its ceiling. Each Lab clears it a different way.
Nothing moves on a clock. New material arrives only after a move, so you can take as long as you like between moves. If material reaches the ceiling, the chamber overloads and the run ends. The chamber doors seal and an Experiment Report banks what the run earned.
Runs earn two things. Credits are spent on upgrading the Lab. Research XP is permanent and decides which upgrades you qualify for. Upgrades raise what the Lab pays and bring in rarer, more valuable Samples.
You start with the Circuit Lab. Finish one Circuit run and Compound comes online; finish one Compound run and Containment does. Most players have all three Labs within their first two runs.
The Home screen is the island itself. Tap a Lab's building or its nameplate to select
it, then press Start run. Each Lab has its own balances and its own
progress.
The first time you open the game, a short tour flies over the island and introduces the three Labs. You can skip it, and replay it later from Settings. Circuit is open from the start. Compound and Containment show as Offline until you finish one run in the Lab before them: one completed Circuit run opens Compound, and one completed Compound run opens Containment. A run you leave from the pause menu does not count. Opening a Lab never costs anything, and an opened Lab stays open.
The move depends on the Lab, and is explained under The three Labs. In every Lab, the material you clear leaves a gap. Everything above the gap drops into it, so what you clear now decides what lines up next.
Every committed move brings new material in from the queue. There is no timer between moves, and the board waits while you think. Keep clearing space below the ceiling.
As the material climbs, the chamber warns you with red capacity lights and a rising alarm. If material reaches the ceiling, the chamber overloads and the run is over. This is the only way a run ends. The chamber doors close and seal, and the Experiment Report opens by itself a couple of seconds later. You do not need to press anything.
The report lists the Credits and Research XP the run earned and any Samples you
recovered. If the run leaves you able to afford this Lab's next upgrade, the report
offers it right there. Then choose Play again or
Back to Facility. When a run opens a new Lab, the report says so and
offers to take you straight to it.
How to play, from the help button on Home or the pause menu during a run.
That page can also include a Practise on this board option.
All three Labs are endless runs with the same specials, the same Sample rules and the same ceiling. What differs is the shape a move takes off the board, and what drives the pressure.
Tap a piece and you clear the matching run in its row. If the piece has no matching partner beside it, its column reacts instead. Clears are small and exact, so every tap is a choice.
Tap a piece and every matching piece connected to it clears together, whatever the shape. Larger groups earn more, so the strongest play is to let a colour grow before you take it.
Hold a piece and drag through matching neighbours. Diagonals and branches count. Release on your selection to clear it. Release anywhere else to cancel, and nothing is fed in.
Clear a large enough group in one move and a Special is left behind. Specials are always earned; none is ever placed on the board for you. Tap a Special to fire it. (In Containment, a Special is selected on its own.) A Special caught in another Special's blast fires too.
| Special | Circuit | Compound | Containment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Column Surge Clears its whole column | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Row Surge Clears its whole row | 4 | 6 | 7 |
| Pulse Core Clears a 3 × 3 area | 5 | 8 | 9 |
| Resonator Clears every piece of its colour on the board | 6+ | 9+ | 10+ |
The smallest single clear that earns each Special in each Lab. A clear between two rungs earns the lower one.
The Column Surge is the cheapest because its value depends on the moment. On a low board it takes a modest amount. When a column is climbing towards the ceiling, it is often the move that saves the run.
Now and then a rare Sample arrives with the material. A Sample is not part of any colour group. To recover it, clear the material beneath it until it drops into the extraction chamber at the bottom of the board. A recovered Sample pays Credits and Research XP on top of whatever the run earns.
| Lab | From Lab Level 1 | From Lab Level 4 | From Lab Level 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circuit | Filament | Ion Cell | Supercore |
| Compound | Reagent | Catalyst | Elixir |
| Containment | Isotope | Antimatter | Singularity |
Each new kind is rarer and worth more than the one before, and it adds to the mix rather than replacing anything. The common Sample keeps arriving, so the valuable one stays something to hope for.
Every run pays out in two resources, and both belong to the Lab you played. Circuit's Credits cannot be spent on Compound, and one Lab's progress never changes another Lab's prices.
Earned from the material you clear and the Samples you recover. Spent to upgrade the Lab that earned them.
Earned alongside Credits and never spent. Each upgrade needs a total amount of it, so it measures how far you have come in that Lab.
An upgrade needs both: enough Credits to pay for it and enough Research XP to qualify.
The Home screen shows the next upgrade for the selected Lab, including exactly what it
costs and what it requires. It is marked AVAILABLE or
LOCKED. Buy it there, or from the Experiment Report straight after a run.
Each Lab Level raises the Credits and Sample rewards that Lab pays. Levels 4 and 7 each add a new, more valuable Sample. The upgrade applies from your next run. Early upgrades take a handful of runs each, and later ones take a few more.
Rewards are banked only when a run ends. The pause menu shows what the current run has earned so far as not yet banked. Restarting or leaving a run discards it, and the game asks you to confirm first.
Clearing low in a column drops everything above it. You rarely build a group by adding to it; you build it by dropping pieces onto it.
A recovered Sample is worth far more than the material around it. Dig under it early. Samples left on the board at shutdown earn nothing.
A piece with no partner beside it takes its column instead. When one column is running towards the ceiling, that is often the move to make.
Play around a colour and leave it alone until it is huge. One big clear is worth far more than the same pieces taken in small groups.
Diagonals and branches mean a path can reach pieces a row or a blob never could. Aim for a Special's size and stop there.
A Special caught in another's blast goes off too. Two sitting in each other's reach is the one chain reaction the game allows. Set it up before you fire.
Rows, blobs and traced paths, all on the same kind of board. Each Lab has its own chamber, sounds and way of failing.
Every run adds Research XP that is never spent, so a short run still moves you forwards.
Three per Lab, unlocked by upgrading, from the common Filament to the rare Singularity.
Column Surge, Row Surge, Pulse Core and Resonator. Each is priced to suit the Lab you earn it in.
The board moves only when you do. Think for as long as you like.
Researchers, a delivery robot, a café, a supply boat and a lookout tower, with an island you can walk around. The island follows the time of day on your phone.
Each Lab has its own electrical, liquid or glass sounds, plus music and vibration feedback. Each can be switched off separately.
No account, no sign-in and no connection needed. Everything happens on your phone.
The Home island is more than a menu. None of the following affects your Labs, except the café, which charges real Credits, and the harbour orders, which pay them.
Tap the café to see its menu: Containment Espresso, Circuit Cortado, Compound Cold
Brew, Absolute Zero Frappé and Decaf Isotope. Orders are expensed to a Lab
grant. They come out of the selected Lab's Credits, at 40 to 110 Credits a cup.
Each paid order earns a stamp on the loyalty card. Ten stamps make you a Certified
Caffeinator and earn a free drink of your choice, and then the card starts again. The
receipts pass on what the staff have overheard.
Take a Seat gives you a table with a view.
The dock takes research orders for the mainland. An order names one of your open Labs and asks for five of its common Samples (Filaments, Reagents or Isotopes), recovered in completed runs in that Lab. Accept it at the dock, recover the Samples in your own time, then come back and dispatch them for 250 Credits, paid into that Lab's account. Orders are optional and have no deadline, and only the order you have accepted counts. Samples still pay their usual reward as well.
When the boat is moored, Step Aboard takes you out on a scenic harbour
tour, and yes, there is a Sound horn button. On board you can turn your
phone sideways for a wider view.
The campus delivery robot does her rounds between the Labs. Tap her to see the island through her eyes as she walks. Drag to look around, and use the return button or Back to come out again.
Tap a bench to sit down and take in the view over the central garden. Tap again to return to the campus.
From the dock you can visit the lookout tower on the western island for a view back across the bay. Tap to return to the campus.
Press Explore campus on Home to walk around the island yourself. Put your
thumb anywhere in the lower part of the screen to bring up a joystick: push up or down
to walk forwards or back, and left or right to turn. Hold it fully forward for a couple
of seconds to speed up to a brisk walk. You can wander the whole bay, including the
shallows out to the neighbouring islands.
Walk up to a Lab door, the café, a bench, the dock or a building to see what you can
do there, or tap it in the upper part of the screen. Turn your phone sideways for a
wider view. Exit takes you back to the usual island view. Exploring is
entirely optional: everything it reaches is also on the ordinary Home screen.
Drag to move the view and pinch to zoom. Turn on Show view controls in
Settings for on-screen Overview, rotate/pan and zoom buttons. Overview
puts the camera back where it started.
Settings open from the gear on the Home screen, or from the pause menu during a run. Every setting is remembered between sessions.
Colour is never the only thing that tells pieces apart: every piece also carries its own symbol. Runs and menus are played in portrait. Exploring the campus and riding the boat also work in landscape. The game keeps clear of notches, rounded corners and the home indicator.
Play again or Back to Facility. Ads never appear
during a run and never cover a report.Settings › Ad privacy choices.An upgrade needs Research XP as well as Credits. The Home screen shows both requirements for the selected Lab, so you can see which one is short. Research XP only comes from playing that Lab, and every run adds some.
Each Lab keeps its own balance, and the balances on the Home screen belong to whichever Lab is selected. Select another Lab to see its balance. Credits are also spent by upgrades, and by coffee at the Promenade Café, which charges the selected Lab.
No. Research XP is permanent. An upgrade asks for a total you have reached, not an amount you give up, so your Research XP only ever goes up.
No. Each Lab's Credits and Research XP belong to that Lab only, and one Lab's progress never changes another's prices.
A Sample only pays when it is recovered, by clearing beneath it until it drops into the extraction chamber. Samples still on the board when the chamber overloads earn nothing.
It cannot. Samples are immune to every blast. If the Sample moved, the blast cleared the material beneath it and it fell, often straight into the extraction chamber.
A Circuit tap takes the matching run in the piece's row whenever it has a matching partner beside it. When it has none, its column reacts instead. That is not a mis-tap; it is how Circuit lets you cut down a tall column.
You released away from your selection, which cancels the move. Nothing is cleared, nothing is fed in, and nothing is lost. To commit, release on your selected material, or on a matching neighbour.
No. New material arrives only after a move, and the board waits for as long as you like. In Containment the pressure rises with the amount of material you have cleared, not with time.
A run's rewards are banked when it ends, and a run in progress is not saved if the app is closed or your phone stops it in the background. Switching briefly to another app is normally fine. To keep what a run has earned, play it through to the report.
There is no in-game reset. Delete and reinstall the app, or on Android clear the app's storage from your phone's settings. Either way everything is erased: all three Labs, your settings, the guides, the harbour order and the café loyalty card. (On Android, a reinstall can bring back progress from your Google backup; clearing storage does not.)
Progress is stored on the phone by the app itself. There is no cloud save and no account, so we cannot recover it for you. If your phone was backed up to iCloud or Google before the app was deleted, restoring from that backup may bring it back.
Not at present. There are no in-app purchases in version 1.0, so there is no ad-free option to buy. Ads only appear between runs and are kept deliberately infrequent. If you would pay to remove them, tell us; that is the kind of thing we decide based on what players ask for.
Yes, completely. Nothing about play needs a connection. Without one you simply see no ads.
Because the game never tracks you, so there is nothing to ask. iOS shows that prompt only for apps that want to follow you across other companies' apps and websites, and ExoLab Blast does not. You may still be asked about personalised advertising where the law requires it, such as in the UK, the EEA and Switzerland. That is a separate question.
It runs on iPad in iPhone compatibility mode. A layout designed for the larger screen is something we would like to do rather than something we have done.
iPhone running iOS 15 or later, and Android devices running Android 8.0 (API 26) or later. Runs and menus are in portrait; exploring the campus and riding the boat also work in landscape.
The game has no violence, no chat, no user-generated content and no purchases. It does show advertising and is intended for a general audience, so the right age rating is the one shown on the store listing. Parents who want no advertising at all can keep the device offline, which leaves the game fully playable.
Force-quit it and reopen it, then restart the phone if that does not help. If it persists, reinstall, but note that reinstalling usually erases your progress. If losing it matters, get in touch before you do.
Check the in-game settings first: sound and music are separate switches, and either can be off on its own. Then check your phone's volume. On iPhone, the silent switch may also mute the game.
Check that Haptics is on in ExoLab Blast's settings, and that vibration is enabled in your phone's own settings. Some Android phones also turn vibration off in battery saver mode.
Close other apps and turn off battery saver, which limits the frame rate on most phones.
Reduced motion also cuts down the moving effects.
Turn on Settings › Show view controls and press
Overview to put the camera back where it started.
Wait a couple of seconds for the close button to appear, then use it. If an ad hangs, force-quit and reopen the game. Ads only appear after a run has been banked, so nothing is lost.
The question is only asked in regions where the law requires it. Where it was asked,
Settings › Ad privacy choices reopens it. If that row is not there,
the question does not apply where you are.
Email info@kestrelpublishing.co.uk. We read everything, including the bug reports that turn out to be feature requests and the feature requests that turn out to be bugs.
To get a useful answer faster, tell us:
We aim to reply within a few working days. Refunds are handled by Apple and Google rather than by us, through the store you downloaded from.