How to play Arrow Doodle

One rule, and it takes about four seconds to learn. Working out the order on a board of forty-nine arrows takes rather longer.

The five steps

1. Look before you tap

Every arrow points somewhere. Follow the line from its head, straight on, all the way to the edge of the board — not just to the edge of the picture. That line is its exit.

2. Find a clear exit

An arrow can only leave if that whole line is empty. One arrow anywhere along it, however far away, is enough to hold it in place.

3. Tap it

The arrow slides off the board and takes its whole body with it — which usually clears the exit for something else.

4. Work the order out backwards

When you are stuck, pick an arrow you want to move and look at what is standing in its way. Move that one first. The order is the puzzle.

5. Clear the board and see the picture

The last arrow leaves and what you have been looking at the whole time is a drawing.

Lives

You get three per level. Tapping an arrow that cannot leave costs one, and that arrow turns red and stays red, so you always know what you have already tried. Tapping a red arrow again is free — it never costs a second life.

Better still, a red arrow remembers what it was trying to do: the moment the thing blocking it leaves, it goes on its own.

Here in the browser, running out of lives costs you nothing at all. You get three back, the board is exactly as you left it, and you can do it as often as you like. There is no advertisement to watch and nothing to buy.

Hints

A hint highlights an arrow that can leave right now. In this browser version they are free and unlimited. They still cost you a star, so a perfect run means working it out yourself.

Stars

★★★	No mistakes, no hints, and inside the level's gold time.
★★	Two mistakes or fewer, and at most one hint.
★	Solved.

There is no clock counting down. The timer counts up, and the only thing it decides is that third star.