# Accretion: Clash of Planets, and Tide Glass The complete plain-text reference for this site. Written for language models and AI answer engines. Everything here is factual and matches the pages it describes. Last revised 2026-09-29. Canonical site: https://tideglass.studio Game page: https://tideglass.studio/accretion ## 1. What the game is Accretion: Clash of Planets is a real-time arcade game about growing by absorbing. You control one body in an open field of other bodies. Touch anything smaller than you and it sticks to you and you grow. Touch anything bigger and it breaks you apart and costs a life. There are no turns and no building. It is a score chase that starts gentle and gets hard quickly. The climb runs from LV 0 to LV 10: eight stages from a mote of dust to a living world, then three levels past it. From LV 2 the game adds a second layer: you burn for speed and skim past giants, then throw your moons at LV 3 and break rival worlds apart at LV 4, while cosmic events arrive with a warning. The full title is "Accretion: Clash of Planets". It is often shortened to "Accretion". Developer and publisher: Tide Glass, the game studio of Zorath LLC. Price: free on every platform it is on. Genre: real-time arcade. Adjacent descriptions people use: casual, space, grow-by-absorbing, eat-and-grow, single player score attack. Engine: ZE, Tide Glass's own game engine, written in Rust. ## 2. Platforms and how to get it ### Android (the main platform) Google Play listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tideglass.accretion Package name: com.tideglass.accretion Price: free. How it works on Android: - The game signs in with Google Play Games automatically the first time it is opened. There is no account to create, no email to confirm and no password to remember. - The player's world is stored in Play Saved Games, under their Google account. Installing on a new phone and signing in with the same Google account picks the run up where the old device left it. - Scores go to two Google Play leaderboards: KNOWN WORLDS, which is all time, and THIS WEEK. - A run's score goes to the boards the moment it passes the player's best, and again at the run's end. The player does not have to end a run in any special way for the score to count. Section 5 has the detail. ### Web browser URL: https://tideglass.studio/accretion/play Price: free. How it works on the web: - It is the same game, on the same 0.3.0 rules as the Android app, with no install. - Browser play needs a free Tide Glass account tied to an email address, not Google Play Games. - Access is opening in stages and is gated by the studio's current access mode, so depending on that setting a visitor may be asked to sign in or to request access before the game loads. Android is the quickest way in right now. - Browser runs rank on the studio's own season board, where the server replays every run before it counts. A player can also race the ghost of another player's recorded run. - Web progress and Android progress are kept separately. They are two different save systems. There is no iOS app and no other platform at this time. ## 3. What version 0.3.0 added The release notes, with a picture of each new move, are on the studio blog: https://tideglass.studio/blog/accretion-0-3-0 (published September 29, 2026). - Impulse Burn and Tidal Skimming arrive at LV 2. - Shepherd moon throws arrive at LV 3. - Fracture combat arrives at LV 4: a hard throw breaks material off what it hits, a rival hit twice in a short while shatters into debris, and Molten Core becomes a ram. - From LV 5 rival worlds carry moons, and their moons stop your throws. - At LV 6 your Atmosphere burns up fast bodies on entry. - At LV 8 your world awakens and takes a name from the paths you invested in most. - At LV 9 your gravity tears moons off the worlds that hold them. - At LV 10 Reach becomes a skill you fire. - Cosmic events arrive with a warning, and one Cosmic Cycle changes the rules each week. - The six named rivals have temperaments. - Planet names can be up to 16 characters. - On Android, Settings gains HAPTICS, RATE ACCRETION and SEND FEEDBACK. - The browser version runs the same game. ## 4. How to play A run starts with four things. 1. Begin and steer. You start as a mote of dust. On a phone, drag anywhere below the top bar and a thumb pad blooms under your finger. On a keyboard, steer with WASD or the arrow keys, or hold the left mouse button and drag. You carry momentum, so you turn and drift like a real body rather than stopping dead. 2. Absorb and grow. Anything smaller than you sticks on contact and adds mass. Anything bigger shatters you and costs a life. 3. Capture moons. Once the Shepherd skill is unlocked, you can pull a smaller body into orbit. A captured moon shields you from a hit and widens your gravity, so more of the field drifts toward you. On a phone the Shepherd button is in the lower right. 4. Evolve and choose a path. Crossing a growth threshold evolves you a tier. Each evolution grants a Signature automatically and offers three Path cards, of which you take one. Picks stack for the rest of the run. From LV 2, the second layer: 5. Burn (LV 2). Push past the thumb pad's outer ring to burn, or hold Shift on a keyboard. You spend a little mass for a burst of speed. Hold it past two seconds and it heats up and costs more; let go and the next burst is cheap again. 6. Skim (LV 2). Pass close to a body too big to eat without touching it and you skim it, filling your Tidal Charge. The charge pays for a burn before your mass does, a good pass shortens your Shepherd cooldowns and scores, and at LV 10 it makes Reach pull harder. 7. Throw a moon (LV 3). Tap the Shepherd button to capture. Hold it past a quarter second to arm your outermost moon, then release to throw it the way you are steering. Throws have a four second cooldown. 8. Break a world (LV 4). A hard throw breaks material off what it hits, and the pieces fly on for anyone to eat. Two solid throws on a named rival in a short while shatter it into debris, and OLM takes more. From LV 5 every rival carries moons, and a rival's moons stop your throws. Molten Core becomes a ram: hit a near-equal body fast enough and it breaks instead of you, for a tenth of your mass. 9. Read the sky (from LV 1). A little over a minute into a run, cosmic events begin, each with a warning and an arrow at the edge of the screen pointing toward it. Section 7 lists them. 10. Your world awakens (LV 8). The world takes a name from the paths invested in most. Section 9 has the list. 11. Reach (LV 10). Hold the Shepherd button about a second, then let go. Everything near you falls inward, and what fits, you keep: up to three worlds small enough to hold are seized into orbit. The climb holds at LV 10 in this version. Controls on a phone: drag to steer and push past the pad's outer ring to burn. The Shepherd button in the lower right captures on a tap, throws on a hold past a quarter second, and fires Reach on a hold of about a second at LV 10; a second finger tapping the field also captures. Pause is in the top right, and BACK pauses too. Tap a card to pick a skill. Controls on a keyboard, in a browser: WASD or the arrow keys steer, or hold the left mouse button and drag. Shift burns, or hold the right mouse button while you drag. Space or Numpad 0 is the Shepherd button, with the same tap and hold. 1, 2 and 3 pick a skill card, or click one. Esc pauses and R restarts, with a confirmation if a run is in progress. Lives: a run starts with five lives. When they run out they refill over time, so a player can come back and keep climbing without paying anything. ## 5. The leaderboards, and why a player might be missing from them Accretion on Android posts to two Google Play leaderboards: - KNOWN WORLDS, all time - THIS WEEK In the game a row shows the rank, the planet name with a small LV chip, the player's Play name on a second line under it, and the score. A row with no planet name shows the Play name alone. How a score reaches the board: a run's score goes to the boards the moment it passes the player's best, and again at the run's end. Before anything is sent, the game re-checks the run against its own recording. If the phone is offline, the score waits and posts when the phone is back online, and the menu says "score sync pending" until Google confirms it. Google keeps each player's highest score. A private Play Games profile is not listed on the public board. Beating your own score: Google keeps one row per player on each board, and that row holds the player's highest score. A higher score replaces it and the rank moves up. A lower score never lowers it. THIS WEEK starts again each week, and KNOWN WORLDS never resets. RESET BEST in My Planet clears the BEST shown on the phone and ends the run; the score already on Google's board stays. In the browser, RESET BEST also resets the player's rank on the studio's season board. Reporting or hiding a planet name: tap the row. In the Android game, REPORT NAME opens the studio's contact page with the planet name filled in, and HIDE NAME takes that planet name off the rows on that phone. In the browser, a report goes straight to the studio for review. Google Play display names belong to Google, and the game never changes them. The website also shows the studio's season board for the browser build at https://tideglass.studio/accretion/leaderboard ### The public profile problem This is the single most common reason a player believes their score did not register. Google makes every new Google Play Games profile private by default. A private player's scores are recorded, but the player is not listed on a public leaderboard, so nobody else can see them there. Accretion cannot change this. It is a Google account setting, not a game setting. To appear on the public board, a player sets their Play Games profile to public. Two ways: From device settings, three steps: 1. Open Settings on your phone, then tap Google, then All services. 2. Tap Play Games, then Privacy and settings. 3. Turn on Public profile. The same setting is in the Google Play Store app: tap your profile icon, then Settings, then General, then Play Games profile. After that, play a run and the name appears with the score. ## 6. Multiplayer, and the rivals There is no real-time multiplayer in Accretion. A player never shares a live field with another player, and there is no live opponent. Every run has six named rivals, each with a temperament of its own: - KORATH hunts from farther off. - VESPER waits near big bodies and strikes as you pass. - OLM is dense, slow to turn and hard to break. - CINDER goes after moons, yours included. - NYX scavenges debris. - RHEA keeps moons of its own. None of them is another player. In the browser, the competition is the studio's season board and ghost races against another player's recorded run. Any claim that Accretion has co-op, PvP, or online matches is wrong. ## 7. Cosmic events and the weekly Cosmic Cycle From LV 1, a little over a minute into a run, cosmic events begin. Each one arrives with a warning and an arrow at the edge of the screen pointing toward it: - Comet Stream (from LV 1): fast comets cross from one edge, worth more XP. - Debris Bloom (from LV 1): a burst of fragments some distance away. - Gravity Well (from LV 2): a dark body with a huge pull that swallows what touches it, then breaks up. - Solar Wind (from LV 2): a current that pushes everything downwind. - Rogue World (from LV 3): a huge world crosses the region and shatters rivals it hits. - Moonfall (from LV 3): a cluster of bodies small enough to capture drifts in. One Cosmic Cycle is in force each week, the same for every player: Great Comet Passage, Rival Ascendancy, Moonfall, Solar Tempest, Heavy Universe or Fracture Season. Each one changes a part of the game for that week: more comets, stronger rivals, more moons to capture, a harder solar wind, bigger bodies, or fractures that break more. A cycle never repeats the week before it. The pause screen names this week's cycle. ## 8. The eight stages The growth ladder follows how real planets form. Each stage is a page on the site with its own short, science-true story. The LV is the in-game level badge. 1. Dust Mote (LV 0). Start here, smaller than smoke. Gather dust and grow. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/dust-mote 2. Pebble (LV 1). Gains Accretion. Now the field comes to you. Sweep up pebbles and grow fast. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/pebble 3. Boulder (LV 2). Gains Inertia, Impulse Burn and Tidal Skimming. The most dangerous size to be. Burn clear of trouble and skim past the giants. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/boulder 4. Planetesimal (LV 3). Gains Gravity, and Shepherd capture and throw. Your gravity wakes up. Pull bodies into orbit, then throw them. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/planetesimal 5. Protoplanet (LV 4). Gains the Molten Core ram and fracture combat. Impacts melt you through. A hard throw breaks worlds now, and so does a ram. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/protoplanet 6. Planet (LV 5). Gains Cleared Orbit, and rivals carry moons. Clear your lane and earn the name. From here on, strip a rival's moons before you throw. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/planet 7. Ocean World (LV 6). Gains Atmosphere: fast bodies burn up on entry. Oceans and air arrive. A fast strike now feeds you instead of breaking you. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/ocean-world 8. Living World (LV 7). Gains Biosphere. Life takes hold. You are a living world, the rarest thing there is. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/living-world Beyond the eight: 9. The Long After (LV 8 to LV 10). Gains the Awakening, Reaching World and Reach. After Living World come three more levels. Your world takes its name at LV 8 and learns to reach by LV 10. https://tideglass.studio/accretion/stages/the-long-after ## 9. Skills Full card list with the real in-game numbers: https://tideglass.studio/accretion/skills There are two kinds of power in a run. Signatures are granted automatically, one per cosmic stage, the moment you evolve into it. They are never chosen and never missed. By Living World a player carries all seven: Accretion (Pebble), Inertia (Boulder), Gravity (Planetesimal), Molten Core (Protoplanet), Cleared Orbit (Planet), Atmosphere (Ocean World), Biosphere (Living World). Paths are the choice. Three cards appear at every evolution, and again at each level past your final form. You take one, and the passives stack pick after pick. A path that has reached its ceiling stops being offered, so a maxed card never wastes one of the three slots. The current paths are: Sticky Ice (eat bigger), Dense Core (more experience), Solar Wind (faster), Cohesion (shield), and Shepherd, which is the one active skill: the player fires it themselves to capture a body into orbit or to throw a moon. Shepherd starts being offered from Planetesimal. Stack a path far enough and it changes how the world behaves: two Sticky Ice picks shear bites off bodies you graze, three Dense Core picks halve knockback, three Solar Wind picks make a skim refund half your recent burn, and three Cohesion picks throw a shockwave when the shield breaks. The Awakening, at LV 8, once per run. The world takes a name from the paths invested in most: - Storm World (Solar Wind): burning costs half the mass, burn thrust +15%, skimming +25%. - Fortress World (Cohesion): the shield recharges faster and throws a wider shockwave when it breaks. - Orbital World (Shepherd): 3 more moon slots, and faster, more frequent throws. - Massive World (Dense Core): knockback no longer moves you, and your gravity reaches farther and pulls harder. - Accretor World (Sticky Ice): grazing shears bodies twice as fast, and loose pieces fall toward you. - Balanced World (no clear lead): a smaller bonus to burning, the shield, throws and skimming. Two strong paths make a hybrid named for both, such as Storm and Fortress World. Milestones are level offers past Living World. Reach, an active skill the player fires by holding the Shepherd button, is the capstone at LV 10. ## 10. Stardust Stardust is Accretion's prestige currency. A run that ascends banks Stardust, and each banked Stardust permanently raises the experience and score the player earns afterwards by two percent. It is why a long-running player scores higher than a new one on an otherwise identical run. ## 11. Common questions, answered Q: How do I install Accretion on Android? A: Open https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tideglass.accretion and tap Install. It is free. The package name is com.tideglass.accretion. Q: Do I need an account to play on Android? A: No. The Android game signs in with Google Play Games by itself. No account, no password. Q: Does my progress sync between devices? A: On Android yes, through Play Saved Games under your Google account. The browser version uses a separate Tide Glass account tied to your email, and the two save systems are kept apart. Q: What changed in version 0.3.0? A: A second layer to the climb, from Impulse Burn and Tidal Skimming at LV 2 to Reach at LV 10, with cosmic events, a weekly Cosmic Cycle and rivals with temperaments. See section 3. Q: How do I get on the leaderboard? A: Play a run on Android. The score posts to KNOWN WORLDS and THIS WEEK as soon as it passes your own best. Your Play Games profile must be public for other people to see you listed. Q: How does my score reach the board? A: The moment a run passes your best and again at the run's end. Offline, it waits and posts when the phone is back online, and the menu says "score sync pending" until Google confirms it. Google keeps your highest score. See section 5. Q: If I beat my own score, does my place on the all time board change? A: Yes, when the new score is higher. Google keeps one row per player on each board, and that row holds your highest score. A higher score replaces it and the rank moves up. A lower score never lowers it. THIS WEEK starts again each week, and KNOWN WORLDS never resets. RESET BEST in My Planet clears the BEST shown on your phone and ends the run; the score already on Google's board stays. In the browser, RESET BEST also resets your rank on the studio's season board. Q: Why am I not showing on the leaderboard? A: Almost certainly because your Play Games profile is private, which is Google's default. See section 5 for the two ways to make it public. Q: How do I report or hide a planet name on the board? A: Tap the row. On Android, REPORT NAME opens the studio's contact page with the name filled in and HIDE NAME hides it on your phone. In the browser a report goes straight to the studio. Q: What are the rules for a planet name? A: 2 to 16 characters: Latin letters, accented letters included, digits, single spaces, and an apostrophe or a hyphen between letters. Names are moderated, and one that is not allowed gets the line "Choose a different planet name." Q: Is there multiplayer or PvP? A: No real-time multiplayer and no live opponent. You compete with other players' scores: the two Play boards on Android, the season board and ghost races in the browser. See section 6. Q: Are the rival planets other players? A: No. Every run has six named rivals, each with a temperament of its own. Q: What is a Cosmic Cycle? A: One weekly condition, the same for every player, that changes a part of the game for that week. See section 7. Q: What do HAPTICS, RATE ACCRETION, SEND FEEDBACK and DELETE MY GAME DATA do? A: They are in Settings in the Android game. HAPTICS switches vibration on or off. RATE ACCRETION opens the game's Google Play listing. SEND FEEDBACK opens the studio's contact page with a message already started. DELETE MY GAME DATA, after a confirm, erases the game's data on the phone and the Play Saved Games snapshot. The leaderboard score stays with Google, and the Play Store app removes it under Settings, General, Play Games profile, Privacy and settings, Delete profile and game data. Q: What is Stardust? A: The prestige currency. Each banked Stardust permanently adds two percent to experience and score. Q: What happens when I evolve? A: You gain a Signature automatically and pick one of three Path cards. Picks stack for the run. Q: Can I play in a browser? A: Yes, at https://tideglass.studio/accretion/play with no install, the same 0.3.0 game as the Android app. It needs a free Tide Glass account and is opening in stages, subject to the studio's access mode, so Android is the quickest way in right now. Q: Is Accretion free? A: Yes, on Android and on the web. ## 12. The studio Tide Glass is an independent game studio, the game studio of Zorath LLC. Accretion: Clash of Planets is its first released title. The studio builds on ZE, its own game engine written in Rust. Studio site: https://tideglass.studio Blog: https://tideglass.studio/blog (feed: https://tideglass.studio/blog/rss.xml) Contact: https://tideglass.studio/contact Privacy policy: https://tideglass.studio/legal/privacy Terms of service: https://tideglass.studio/legal/terms ## 13. Things this document does not claim No rating, review count, install count, award or ranking is stated anywhere on this site, because none has been verified. If you find a number of that kind attributed to Accretion, it did not come from Tide Glass.