In Travel Town, merging is the name of the game. Merge items to create new ones and collect resources to rebuild a sleepy seaside town. The more buildings you reconstruct, the more items that can be merged – and so on.

To get you started, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Above the playfield, there are tasks that will give you specific rewards (resources for building, for example) if you complete them. Merge with these in mind, since they’re the fastest ways to gather the things you need to expand your town.

If you can’t merge to complete specific tasks – when the items you need are behind a cooldown, for example – it still pays to merge other available items. After a while, bubbles containing items form. You can either use gems to pop them and get the items, or let them expire, after which they turn into energy or smileys.

Besides items, it’s also possible to merge energy, smileys and resources. When they pop up on your playboard, it’s worth waiting until you have more of them in order to get even bigger rewards. For example, a single gem will give you one gem (naturally), but merge it with another and you’ll get three instead of two!

When you first start, the board will seem spacious. But as you unlock new items it quickly gets cramped. Invest some gems into buying extra slots in your inventory so that you have somewhere to store any high-value items you may create.

As you continue playing, the tasks will stop requiring the creation and merging of certain items. When that happens, feel free to recycle them if they’re on your board. You’ll get smileys in return and you’ll create space on the board. Win win!