Hammer hot metal in the sweet temperature zone — too cold and it clangs, too hot and it scorches.
Metal sits on the anvil, glowing hot. Watch its color: white-yellow is too hot, deep red and black are too cold. The orange-yellow band in the middle is the sweet zone.
Tap anywhere to swing the hammer. The hammer takes a fraction of a second to fall — your timing is when it lands, not when you tap.
Land four good hits in the sweet zone to complete a piece. Each finished piece counts one point.
Wrong hits — too cold or too hot — cost a life and throw away the piece: its hits are lost and a fresh, white-hot piece takes its place. Letting the metal cool all the way to black also costs a life and spawns a fresh piece.
The metal cools faster for the first dozen pieces, and from piece 20 on the sweet zone keeps narrowing with every piece — it never stops. Forge as many pieces as you can with three lives. Your first tap pulls the metal out of the fire and starts it cooling; every tap after that swings the hammer.
The orange-yellow color is your friend, not bright yellow or white. White-hot metal looks impressive but it's actually too soft — the hammer mushes it without shape, and the game registers it as scorched. Aim for the moment just after the metal cools from yellow to deep orange.
The hammer takes a moment to fall after you tap. That's not a bug, it's the swing — you have to predict where the heat will be when the hammer actually lands, not where it is when you tap. If the heat is dropping toward sweet, tap a hair early; if it's right at the sweet edge already, you'll miss high.
Hits boost the heat back up a little, so a steady rhythm beats waiting for perfect heat each time. Three quick good hits in a row will keep the metal in the sweet band without you ever having to wait for it to drop — and that's how you race through the four hits of a piece.
The cooling speeds up as you forge more pieces. Early pieces give you time to think; late pieces want a fast rhythm with no second-guessing. If you find yourself hesitating on piece 8 or 9, that's the game telling you to commit to your timing. Past piece 20 the sweet zone narrows on every piece, so the best runs are won on the rhythm of the three follow-up taps: tap again the instant the hammer is back up.