Element combination game: Loomlight, free to play
Loomlight is a free element combination game you play in your browser. Drag one thing onto another and they turn into a third. Water and earth make mud. Mud and sun make a seed. A seed and some rain make a sprout. From four things at the start, a hundred and eighty hand-drawn ones open up.
No download. No account. No app store. Open the page and you’re playing.
How to play
You start with water, earth, fire and air. Drag any one onto any other and see what happens. Everything you find stays in your collection, so the board gets better the longer you play.
- Drag one thing onto another to combine them
- Tap one and then the other if you’d rather not drag. It works the same way
- Search your collection once it gets big
- Nothing is ever lost. Your discoveries save in your browser on their own
There are 180 things to find, from mud and moss up to a lighthouse, a loom, a windmill and a jar of honey.
A new puzzle every day
Next to free play there’s today’s target: one thing that everyone in the world is trying to make on the same day. A lighthouse. A bundle of wool. Bread.
Here’s the part that brings people back — you get your own things to start with. Everyone chases the same target, but the extra things you begin with are dealt just for you, so nobody else’s answer is your answer. You have to find your own way there.
Your score works like golf: how many steps you took against the fewest possible from the things you were given. Beat that and you’ve genuinely found something clever.
Share your score without spoiling it
Most games about combining things can’t be shared, because the recipe is the answer. Post your route and you’ve ended the puzzle for everyone reading.
Loomlight shares the shape of your route instead: your step count, how you did against the target, and a pattern of colours showing the kind of thing you made at each step:
Loomlight — Lighthouse in 14 steps (2 under)
🟫🟦🟨🟨🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟧🟧🟧🟪Good to post, and it gives nothing away. If you do want to be told the answer, there’s a separate button for that.
Is it free? Do I need an account?
Free, with nothing to buy and nothing to unlock. No account, no sign-up, no chat and no way for players to message each other — which makes it a safe thing to leave a child playing. It works on a phone as well as a laptop.
If you like games like Little Alchemy
Loomlight will feel familiar and play differently. Those games are endless and open. Loomlight has an end, and everything in it was made by hand: all 180 things were chosen and drawn on purpose, so you never end up staring at a nonsense phrase nobody meant.
And because the list stops somewhere, there really is a best route to each thing — which is what turns the daily puzzle into a real one with a score to beat. There’s more in our guide to games like Infinite Craft and Little Alchemy.