Goal
Fill all 25 squares and score as high as you can. There is no timer and no way to lose. Your only opponent is your own best score.
The four traits
Every tile carries four traits. Only one of them uses color, so the game is fully playable without it. If the colors are hard to tell apart, switch to the color-blind friendly set in Settings.
Shape: oval, diamond, squiggle.
Color: cinnabar, malachite, lapis.
Fill: solid, striped, outline.
Material: stone, wood, bronze.
Scoring
- When you place a tile, count every trait it shares with the tiles directly above, below, left, and right of it.
- You score the total number of shared traits, squared.
- 3 shared traits scores 9. 6 shared traits scores 36. 10 scores 100.
- Because it is squared, crowding matches together beats spreading them out by a wide margin.
The preview
Point at, or move the keyboard to, any empty square and you will see what your selected tile would score there. Contributing neighbors are ringed. You can turn this off in Settings.
Controls
- Touch or mouse: drag a tile from On Deck onto an empty square, or tap the tile and then tap the square.
- Keyboard: 1 2 3 choose a tile, arrow keys move around the board, Enter places it.
- U undo. S swap. Esc closes any dialog.
Swaps
Two per game. A swap returns all three on deck tiles to the deck, shuffles, and deals three new ones.
Ending
The game ends when the board is full.