NEW GAME

Mode

Table

Puzzle deck

36 cards

Deck

Seats

DEBUG / FEEL

Controls

Left-thumb controls

AI

Camera

Juice

HOW TO HANDLE CARDS

Place

Your deck sits bottom centre, one face showing — tap it to flip the deck over and see the other end, just like the physical stack (its thickness shows how many cards remain). Drag it out to play the visible card; it floats above your thumb with amplified motion, and a faint twin bottom-left mirrors its exact state. Near a connector it turns itself to fit, whatever angle it started at; a swipe or arrow key then steps it between the valid orientations, and a flip pivots across the connector itself so the join never breaks — like turning a card over in place on the felt.

Rotate & flip

Flick your other thumb anywhere — each swipe spins the card 45°, and a long swipe chains several steps. Tap the held card (or its faint twin): tap an end for end-over-end, tap a side to flip along the long edge. The buttons around the twin do the same jobs: ↺ ↻ rotate, ⇵ tumbles it over the top edge, ⇄ flips it across the vertical.

Drop

Near a matching shape the card snaps in and glows green. Lift both thumbs to place it. Red shows which rule the spot breaks — lifting there sends the card back to the deck. While snapped, drag slowly to cycle through every other fit at that spot (flipped placements first, sprawling overlaps last); a quick flick breaks away and moves the card normally.

Solo puzzle

Choose how many colours, which suits and what number range to shuffle in (two colours, all suits, 1–6 by default). The chosen colours are shuffled — faces and ends randomised — and dealt clockwise into a ring. Sort all 36 cards into the six piles below, each pile one colour and suit, built 1 up to 6. Double-tap an uncovered card to send it straight to its pile when it's next; with Auto-send on (setup, or the AUTO chip), eligible cards bank themselves after your first move. Tap any uncovered card: the camera pulls back and faint copies of the card appear at every legal destination — tap one (or the glowing pile) to send it there, and tap the card again to cycle through the other ways it fits that spot. Tap empty felt to deselect and the camera returns to where you were. Every legal placement gets its own outlined copy — including different orientations at the same spot, brightest first — and each is a touch target. Covered cards aren't tappable, so dragging anywhere on the board pans. A card with no fits still selects (it shakes red to say so) because it can always become a second island: select it, then drag it — puzzle drags follow your finger one-to-one — out to open table. Dragging still works too: onto a pile if it's the next number, or onto another card of the same colour exactly one higher or lower — or onto the start card, which accepts anything. Cards can come back off the piles the same way. The seed chip up top reproduces a deal — tap it to copy.

Par

After the deal, a solver quietly works the puzzle in the background and posts a par — its own score, where every move counts one and every island counts six. Beat it and you've out-thought the machine; the SOLVED screen shows your score against par. Hard deals can outrun the solver's time budget and show "par —". The tier next to par says what you're up against: open needs no island, knotted one or two, gordian three or more.

Second island

Once per game (more if you set it up that way) you may lift any uncovered card and set it down on open table, away from everything — a second island. Nothing has to connect. It's the release valve for a knotted board, so it asks you to confirm before spending one, and the counter up top shows what's left.

Progression

Whatever you build in the Setup Lab becomes the level tree, cached for the session. Pick PROGRESSION to play it: the board appears dark, the start card lit, and every card you've given settings to is a level — tap it to play with exactly those rules. Finish and you return to the tree with that level lit.

Setup lab

A recording room for the puzzle deal: pick any card by colour, number and suit from the bar above the tray and place it wherever it should go (the same card can be placed as often as you like). Long-press any placed card to open its level settings — branch, mode, deck makeup, rules, tutorial goal — or to delete it (standard geometry rules, no colour restriction). Uncovered cards can be picked up and moved. Every placement and movement is logged with its target card, shape and angles — tap COPY in the top bar to download the recording as a file, and hand that to your assistant to turn your hand-built deal into the algorithm.

Modes

Turn based and chess clock rotate turns; real-time race and timed free-for-all let every seat play whenever they like (switch your color with the tabs above the tray). AI seats scout a few spots before committing — each difficulty has its own style, every AI rolls its own aggression, and in the real-time modes they all fly at once (they won't land on a spot another AI has claimed). Gauntlet runs re-deal after every win with a stronger, faster AI; decks and AI temperaments come from the seed, so share a seed to race the same run.

Board

The camera follows the game, easing out to frame the whole board when cards land. Pan or pinch any time to take over; double-tap open felt to hand it back. With no card in hand: one finger pans, two fingers pinch to zoom. Pick a table shape in setup — presets, a random one, or draw your own on the dots — and every card must land inside it. Endless is the classic infinite felt. Your deck stays on screen while you play, and every other seat's cards sit around the table's edge, face up: what they can play is public.

On a Mac

Drag with the mouse or trackpad. While dragging: ← → or A / D rotate (stepping between valid fits near connectors), F flips (across the connector when snapped, else the long edge), W and S are the two mirror flips. Esc cancels, and clicking away or switching windows safely returns the card. With nothing in hand, two-finger swipe pans and pinch (or ⌘/Ctrl-scroll) zooms.