Coins and Economy

Coins are GeoWords' currency for performing actions. Think of them as units of energy for effecting change on the hexasphere.

How Coins Work

• Earn coins by playing valid words. The coin reward equals the word's score (sum of letter values).
• Spend coins on actions to rearrange letters toward playable words.
• No coins, no actions — without coins you can only play words that already exist in selectable order on the hexasphere.

Starting Balance

Each game begins with a starting coin balance. In Lock Down mode, you start with 1,000 coins — enough to get going but not enough to rearrange freely forever.

The Economic Tension

Coins create a strategic resource management layer on top of the word puzzle:

• Cheap actions (Cycle Forward on a short selection: 2–4C) are low-risk experiments.
• Expensive actions (Reverse on a long selection: 15C+) are commitments that should yield a playable word.
• Undo refunds coins, so you can experiment safely — but you can't undo a played word.

Running Out

If no playable words exist in selectable order and you have no coins, the game is effectively over. Different game modes handle this differently:

• Lock Down: the game ends automatically when no moves remain and coins are exhausted.
• Uphill Slope (future): the game ends when the board fills up completely.

Coin Display

Your current coin balance is shown in the right sidebar. Action buttons display their cost (e.g., "Reverse (6C)") and are disabled when you can't afford them.

Rule of Thumb

1 coin per tile mutation. Actions that touch more tiles cost more. This is the foundation of the Swap Rule.