How to Play Skitter
Skitter is a slide-until-blocked routing puzzle played on a marble orrery floor. Each board holds brass walls, a gold lead bead, sometimes one or two helper beads, and a glowing goal socket. You choose a bead and a direction, and that bead slides in a straight line until the next cell is a wall, the board edge, another bead or a pin. You can never stop a bead halfway, and a bead that passes over the socket does not count. The lead bead has to come to rest on the socket.
What makes the puzzle different is the pin tray. Most levels hand you a small, counted supply of brass pins. Dropping a pin on an empty cell turns that cell into a stopping point, and lifting a placed pin returns it to the tray. Every slide, every drop and every lift is one move, and par is the fewest total moves that solve the board, pin work included. Stars measure you against par: match it for three, finish within two moves of it for two, and any solve earns one.
Tips and Strategy
- Read the dotted lanes. Select a bead and the path preview shows exactly which cell it will stop on in each direction, so nothing about a slide is hidden.
- Work backwards from the socket. Ask which cell is next to the socket and what would stop the lead there, then plan how the lead reaches that lane.
- Park a helper as a stopper. Helper beads rest against what they hit and never push, so a helper sitting beside the socket does the work of a pin for free.
- A pin is worth one move, so spend it where it saves two. A pin that shortens the route by a single slide only breaks even.
- Relocate pins when the tray is empty. Lifting a pin and dropping it elsewhere costs two moves, which is sometimes still cheaper than a long detour.
- Use undo freely. Undo rolls the move counter back with the board, so exploring a dead end costs nothing.
What Makes Skitter Different
Most slide puzzles give you a fixed board and ask you to find the route. Skitter lets you build part of the board while you solve it. Because a bead can never be stopped by the player, every stopping point has to come from somewhere: a wall that was already there, the edge of the floor, another bead, or a pin you paid a move to place. That turns each level into a small budgeting problem. You are not only asking where the gold bead has to end up, you are asking which one or two cells are worth turning into brass stops, and whether a helper bead can fill that job for nothing.
Because pins and beads both count as blockers, the same board often has two or three quite different solutions that look equally sensible. One spends a pin early and slides twice. Another parks the copper bead against a wall, uses it as a bumper, and never opens the tray. The par shown on the HUD is the shortest of all of them, found by an exact search of every slide, drop and lift, so a par solve really is the best the board allows, and you can take a hint to see the first move of that best line when you are stuck.
The Six Tiers
The ladder climbs through six tiers, each named for a rung of the clockmaker's workshop. Tutorial boards are small five-by-five floors with a lone gold bead, and they teach sliding first and the pin tool second. Apprentice widens the floor to six by six, gives you one pin to place, and brings in the first copper helper bead. Journeyman adds a second pin on its later boards and more walls, so lanes start to cross. Artisan moves to seven by seven with up to two helpers, and the best solutions begin to depend on parking a helper before you touch the lead. Master and Horologist use the full eight by eight floor with the densest walls, and the last tier hands you three pins, which sounds generous until you notice how many different ways there are to spend them. After the final level a short closing scene plays, and the daily board and Free Wind keep the workshop open.
The Daily Board and Free Wind
Every day has one shared board. It is wound from the UTC date, so every player sees the same floor and the same par, and its difficulty follows the day of the week: gentle early in the week, harder toward the weekend, with Sunday reserved for the top tier. Solve it for the day and your streak grows; only the first real attempt counts toward the daily score and the leaderboard, and later tries are practice. Free Wind is the opposite end of the dial. Pick a tier, type any seed or press Random, and the same seed and tier always wind the same board, so you can send a friend a seed and compare move counts. Free Wind boards are never posted to the leaderboard, which makes them a good place to try a wild idea.
A Short History of Sliding Puzzles
Slide-until-you-hit-something puzzles are a durable corner of puzzle design. Ice-floor rooms have appeared in many classic adventure games, where a character cannot stop until a rock or a wall gets in the way, and the board game Ricochet Robots, designed by Alex Randolph, turned the same rule into a race to find the shortest bouncing path. Phone and browser puzzle collections have kept the idea alive ever since, usually with a fixed board. Skitter keeps the central rule of the genre, that you cannot control where a piece stops, and adds one new lever: a counted supply of pins that lets you manufacture the stops yourself, at a price paid in moves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why will my bead not stop where I want it to?
In Skitter a bead always keeps sliding until the next cell in its direction is a wall, the edge of the floor, another bead or a pin. You cannot stop it halfway, and passing over the goal socket does not count. To make a bead stop on a particular cell, something has to be sitting just beyond that cell, so either find an existing blocker or drop a pin there. Selecting the bead with the path preview on shows the exact stopping cell in every direction before you commit.
What are pins and why does placing one cost a move?
Pins are brass pegs in the pin tray under the board. With the pin tool on, tapping an empty cell drops a pin there, and tapping a placed pin lifts it back into the tray. A pin stops beads exactly like a wall does. Dropping and lifting each count as one move, the same as a slide, because the pin supply is the whole point of the puzzle: stopping points are never free, so you have to decide which ones are worth paying for.
Does par include pin moves?
Yes. Par is the smallest total number of moves that solves the board, counting every slide, every pin drop and every pin lift. An exact solver checks each level, so par is the genuine minimum and not an estimate. A route with an extra pin that saves one slide only breaks even, and a pin you place and later lift costs two moves on its own.
Can one bead push another bead?
No. Beads never push. A sliding bead that meets another bead stops in the cell right before it, resting against it, so a parked helper bead works as a blocker just like a wall or a pin. That is why the copper helper beads matter: sliding one into position can stand in for a pin and save you the move that pin would have cost.
How are stars earned, and does a hint cost stars?
Finishing within par earns three stars, finishing within two moves of par earns two, and any solve earns one. Undo rolls the move counter back along with the board, so exploring a dead end costs nothing. The Hint button shows the next move of an optimal line, but an attempt that used a hint is capped at two stars even if you match par.
How is the daily puzzle chosen?
The daily board is generated from the current UTC date, so everyone gets the same floor and par on the same day. Its tier follows the weekday: Monday uses the first tier, rising through the week, with Sunday using the hardest. Solving it extends your streak when you play on consecutive days, and after your first solve the board stays open as practice that does not change your score.
What is Free Wind?
Free Wind lets you choose any tier and type or randomise a seed. The same tier and seed always wind the same board, so you can share a seed with a friend and compare move counts. Free Wind boards use the same solver-checked par and stars, but they are never submitted to the leaderboard, so they are a safe place to experiment with the pin tray.
Where is my progress saved, and can I resume a level?
Progress is saved in your own browser: your best moves and stars for each level, how far you have climbed, your daily streak, your settings and the position of the level you are in the middle of, including bead positions, placed pins and your move list. Reload the page and the Begin button becomes Continue and returns you to the exact board. Clearing site data for the page will erase it.
