The best falling sand puzzle games for iPhone

How sand block puzzles work

You drop a shaped piece as you would in a block puzzle, but it turns into sand as it lands. Grains spill into gaps and pile into slopes. Instead of filling a straight row, you clear by connecting one colour across the board — so you're always thinking about where the sand will end up, not just where the block goes.

What separates the good ones

Most sand puzzles are a single endless mode with ads between rounds. The best ones add variety in the material itself and give you goals beyond a high score.

• Different materials — water that settles flat, wet sand that holds a cliff, ice, vines, fire
• A campaign or puzzle stages, not only endless play
• Daily boards that are the same for everyone
• No ads, and a one-time price
• Accessibility options, especially colour-blind patterns — colour matters in these games

SandMorph: the sand puzzle with an Expedition

SandMorph is built around real falling-sand physics with a ten-land Expedition, each land adding its own material and weather. You dig up buried relics, rebuild ten artifacts, and earn hats for Morph, your sand sprite.

It also has 100 hand-tuned puzzle stages, Endless Flow, Colour Cascade, Zen Sands with no clock, a Daily Dune and a Weekly Challenge. It has no ads and no tracking, it's only 29 MB, and colour patterns, VoiceOver and a high-contrast board are built in.

Side-by-side comparisons

• SandMorph vs Sand Blocks
• SandMorph vs Sand Loop