Merge Maestro vs Pathways
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Merge Maestro
Combine hundreds of unique emoji tokens in a puzzle-like, rogue-like experience. Discover creative combinations of tokens and powers to fuse unique strategies and overcome increasingly challenging levels. Enjoy a twist on puzzle, rogue-like, and arcade gameplay.
- Hundreds of unique emoji tokens
- Combo-driven gameplay
- Puzzle-like rogue-like mechanics
- Discover creative token combinations
- Fuse unique strategies
- Challenging levels
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Combine 100's of unique emoji based tokens in this combo-driven puzzle-like rogue-like! Find ever more creative combinations of Tokens and Powers to fuse unique strategies and beat this ever more challenging twist on rogue-likes, puzzlers and arcadey games!
Pathways
A minimalist logic puzzle game where players guide a dot to its home space by drawing colored paths. It offers increasing difficulty levels and daily challenges, with an option for advanced features like custom level creation.
- Draw colored paths to guide a dot
- Solve spatial reasoning puzzles
- Progress through increasing grid sizes
- Daily timed puzzles with score sharing
- Create and share custom levels
- No ads, playable offline
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Pathways is a spatial reasoning logic puzzle with a clean, minimalist design. The goal is simple: move the dot home! How it works: -Each grid has one dot, and one home space -The dot can only move to colored spaces -Use tabs on the side of the grid to draw paths of color -Retract and redraw paths as necessary -Move that dot home! Easy to learn, difficult to master -Start with 3x4 grids to learn the ropes -Up the challenge with 4x4 grids -Put yourself to the real test with 4x5 grids Daily Puzzles -Timed puzzles, share your score with friends -Puzzles increase in difficulty throughout the week -Build your streak! Pathways PRO -Access all packs (375 puzzles + future packs) -Access Daily Puzzle archive to play old puzzles (100+ Daily Puzzles) -Create your own levels, share with friends and/or submit to Pathways to be featured Why Pathways? -Clean, minimalistic design -Simple rules, yet challenging solutions -No ads, no wifi required Up for the challenge? Download Pathways today!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Merge Maestro at every 9 days against Pathways's every 2 months. Merge Maestro also leads on ratings volume (144 vs 27) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 14.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Merge Maestro sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Pathways sells 9 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Merge Maestro against 4.8 for Pathways. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Merge Maestro has 144 ratings behind it against 27, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 91% of Merge Maestro's written reviews are positive against 90% of Pathways's.
Merge Maestro ships an update every 9 days, Pathways every 2 months. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Merge Maestro | Pathways |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (144 ratings) — better | 4.8 (27 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 91.4% of reviews — better | 90.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 144 — better | 27 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 94 MB | 36 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | DAVID HS TING | William Arbuckle |
Customer experience
Merge Maestro
Pathways
Bugs and requests
Merge Maestro
Reported bugs
2 issues- Crashes on startup
- Medal tracking issues
Requested features
2 requests- Endless mode
- UI/text scale options
Pathways
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Merge Maestro
- Full Access$2.99
Pathways
- Support Developpment$0.99
- Support Developpment$1.99
- Support Developpment$4.99
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- Pathways PRO$7.99
- Support Developpment$7.99
- Support Developpment$9.99
- Support Developpment$14.99
- Support Developpment$19.99
- Support Developpment$29.99
