Balance — weigh the fruit

Balance is an old brass beam scale, the kind that stood on grocers' counters and in apothecaries: a column with a fluted shaft, a beam on a knife edge, two pans hanging on little chains and a needle swinging over an enamel dial. Brass weights stand in a long velvet tray, and a row of market crates along the counter holds the fruit, one crate per kind. Put things on both sides and watch the beam tip, swing and slowly settle. When both pans weigh exactly the same, the needle stops right in the middle, the scale rings a chord and fireworks go off.

How to play

Tap the right side of the screen and a fruit drops into the right pan; tap the left side and the right brass weight jumps out of the tray into the left pan, like a grocer weighing your apples, until it balances to the gram. Tap a weight in the tray to pick that one, tap a crate (apples, pears, oranges, lemons, cherries, plums, grapes, bananas, melons, feathers) and its fruit jumps into the pan; the fruit that falls from the sky when you tap the right side is the one of the last crate you touched, or a mix. Grab any fruit or weight and throw it, tap one in a pan to make it hop, pull a pan with your finger and let the beam swing. Drop a heavy melon and the other pan slams up so hard that the cherries jump. Choose the room (apothecary, market, silver night), the sensitivity, switch to fruit against fruit or to a hanging mobile of four pans, try low gravity, or press Weigh and let the scale find the balance for you.

Why it's satisfying

Weighing is one of the oldest calm gestures there is: add a little, take a little, watch the needle hesitate and come to rest. Everything here has weight and inertia, the pans sway on their chains, brass clinks, fruit lands with a soft knock, and the perfect balance is always reachable to the gram. Nothing to win, nothing to lose, just the needle in the middle.

About

Balance is part of Alcy, forty-six free contemplative micro-games in your browser. For more things with weight: Burger, Domino, Gears.