The board, the weapons, and what a cascade actually does
Every tile is a weapon, every match is a volley, and a chain of matches is a barrage. Here is how the core of the game works.
The whole game rests on one idea: matching tiles should feel like firing a weapon, not like tidying a shelf. So every tile on the board is a weapon — a Shotgun, a set of Blades, an SMG, a Sidearm, or a canister of the Legion’s leaking Hazard. They all match the same way, three in a line, and what changes is what you are firing and how it sounds.
Swap two neighbouring tiles to line three of them up. The match clears and the whole thing becomes a volley aimed at the health bar across from you. The longer the line, the harder it hits: a match of four does more than a match of three, and five hits harder still.
When tiles clear, everything above falls down to fill the gap. If that makes another match, it fires immediately, for free, without costing you a move. That is a cascade, and it is the single most important thing to understand about the game. Every link in the chain multiplies both your damage and your score, so a deep cascade can decide a level in one move.
Match four in a line and the surviving tile becomes a striped tile, which clears a whole row or column when you swap it into a match. Match five, or make an L or a T shape, and you forge an Overload Charge — the most dangerous thing on the board. Swap a Charge with any ordinary tile and it detonates, clearing every weapon of that type at once. Swap two Charges together and the entire board goes.
It sounds like a lot to hold in your head. It is not, in practice: the board tells you what it wants, and once you have seen one good cascade you will spend the rest of the campaign looking for the next one.