POPCHAIN beginner's guide: pop the squad, keep the stream live
How popping and scoring work, the dashed line, viewers and chat, coins and levels, and what your first three runs teach you in POPCHAIN.
POPCHAIN is a jelly popping puzzle where every run is staged as a livestream. You pop groups of same-color jellies in a glass jar, a caster calls the big moments, the chat reacts, and the viewer count climbs.
The stream is pretend. There is no camera, no real audience and no chat from strangers: the chat names come from a list built into the game. This guide covers how popping and scoring work, what ends a run, and how coins, levels and the first few runs work.
How popping works
Jellies come in six colors (pink, yellow, green, blue, purple and orange) and fall into the jar. Tap any touching group of 3 or more same-color jellies and the whole group pops.
A tap on a group smaller than 3 is a miss. It resets your combo, costs 3 percent of your viewers, drains the FEVER meter and drops an extra jelly into the jar, and missing again quickly drops even more.
How points work
A pop scores the group size squared, times 10, times your combo multiplier. One group of 10 is worth 1,000 base points, while a group of 3 is worth only 90. That one rule shapes the whole game: a few big groups are worth far more than many small ones.
The dashed line and reviving
The run ends with OVERFLOW when a settled jelly stays above the dashed line near the top of the jar for 2 seconds. Jellies that are still falling do not count.
Once per run you can revive by watching a rewarded ad. It clears the upper part of the pile and gives you 3 seconds of safety. Marathon offers a revive only after 15 seconds of play, and Today's Show never offers one.
Viewers, chat and the caster
Every run starts with 8 to 22 viewers. Pops add viewers, more for big groups and combos, FEVER brings a raid of extra viewers, and the count slowly drifts down when nothing happens. Milestones at 100, 500, 1K, 5K, 10K, 50K, 100K, 500K and 1M get an on-screen notice and a chat reaction.
Viewers never end a run by themselves; only the dashed line does. A caster voice calls the big moments in 22 languages, and you can switch the chat off with the LIVE CHAT setting.
Coins, XP and levels
- Coins come from your score (score divided by 40), chat tips after big moments, floating coin bubbles you tap, and missions.
- XP is your score divided by 25. Playing on consecutive days adds 10 percent per extra day, up to 50 percent, to a run's XP and coins.
- Each account level gives coins and a booster, every 5th level adds a gift box, and levels 3, 7, 12, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 75 and 100 unlock a skin. The PASS button on the home screen shows this free level road, the Pop Pass.
- Three missions are active at a time, such as pop a group of 6 or more, or stay live for 60 seconds. Each pays XP plus half as many coins.
Your first three runs
Each run opens with a 3, 2, 1, LIVE! countdown, and the very first run uses only 4 colors. That first run is a five-step coach: tap a group, pop the biggest group, pop again fast for a COMBO, watch the dashed line, then play. While it runs, new jellies pause near the line, so it cannot end in an overflow. SKIP ends it, and Replay tutorial in Settings plays it again.
The second run teaches stirring, where you drag a finger through the jar to mix the jellies, and the third puts a free bomb in the dock with a lesson on how to use it.
Daily gifts and the wheel
Daily gifts follow a 7-day calendar: days 1 to 6 pay 100, 150, 200, 300, 400 and 600 coins, and day 7 gives the Sakura skin (or 1,500 coins if you already own it). You can claim once a day, and a missed day does not reset the calendar. The daily wheel gives one free spin, plus up to two more for rewarded ads.
