Volta Battery Bench

Charge is money — and it does not sit still.

Volta is an idle-merge game set on a Victorian galvanic battery bench. Brass voltaic cells sit on a bench grid: every cell builds charge on its own, but every cell also self-discharges, second by second, so charge bleeds away the moment you stop tending. That upkeep tension is the whole game — you are always racing your own leakage.

Drag a cell onto a matching-tier cell to merge one tier up, from a Simple Cell all the way to a Grand Bank. Bigger banks hold and generate far more charge, but they also leak faster when neglected, so a merged bench is powerful and greedy at once. Buy the inverter and set cells beside it: the routing lines light up and every adjacent cell outputs double.

Tap the charge to bank it as coin, then reinvest — fresh acid and platinum plates for more generation, gutta-percha insulation to slow the leak, a wider bench, and an Auto-Tender who sells for you. When you have sold enough charge, stack a New Pile: the bench strikes galvani sparks — a permanent +12% to everything — and the Galvani Vault keeps whatever you buy there through every reset.

And every New Pile is now a real decision: swear the next pile to one of four Charter Schools. Volta's Charter generates furiously but leaks harder; Daniell's barely leaks but runs cool; Grove's makes every merge strike a surge of coin but prices the cells up; Faraday's sells dear from smaller jars. Complete a pile under a charter and its permanent mastery is yours — four levels per school, and which school you master first is yours to plot.

Meanwhile the Commission Book keeps a patron waiting: twenty-eight commissions from the electrical age — the Lyceum, Sir Humphry Davy, the Royal Society, the Great Exhibition — each measuring your lifetime feats and paying in bench-scaled coin or galvani sparks.

And when a jar truly brims, the Exhibition Gallery is waiting. Twelve plinths in three wings each ask for a cell of an exact tier presented at full charge — the leak itself guards the museum door. Donating retires that cell from the bench forever, but its exhibit answers with a permanent echo, full wings strike greater bonuses, and each wing unlocks a cosmetic bench finish — ebony, cherry, mahogany. The Bench Record keeps your whole career in one ruled column.

It runs while you are away, but so does the leak. Come back to the welcome-back sheet and see the NET: sometimes a tidy gain, sometimes a low-charge warning that your bench nearly drained.

• The leak is the hook — cells generate AND bleed, so neglect is punished
• Drag-merge nine tiers of brass galvanic cells
• Adjacency routing: cells next to the inverter output double
• Sell charge for coin; buy acid, plates, insulation, a wider bench
• New Pile prestige banks permanent galvani sparks; the Vault persists
• Swear each pile to one of four Charter Schools — a boon, a price, and a permanent mastery track
• A Commission Book of 28 patrons pays coin and galvani sparks for lifetime feats
• The Exhibition Gallery: retire brimming jars to twelve plinths for permanent echoes and earned bench finishes
• Offline net can be a gain OR a drain — tend the bench or lose charge
• A once-a-day Morning Charge tops every cell and gifts coin — a missed day pauses your run of mornings, never resets it
• Two optional extras extend the free 1-hour offline cap to 8h/24h — never pay-to-progress
• Fully offline, no account, nothing collected

Keep the current flowing.