Rulebooks/Cut the Rope
Rulebook 07 · Physics puzzle
How to play Cut the Rope
A sweet hangs on a rope. A small green creature waits below with its mouth open. You cut the rope, and gravity does the rest. Every level is one variation on that sentence — extra ropes, air cushions, bubbles, spikes — and every level has exactly one arrangement of cuts that works. There is no timer, no reflex test and nothing to survive. You look at it until you see it.
- Game type
- Single-screen physics puzzle, single player
- One level
- Thirty seconds to several minutes, entirely at your own pace
- Input
- Tap or drag across a rope to cut it; tap bubbles and cushions
- Attention
- Untimed and still; the level holds its position until you act
- Progress
- Up to three stars per level
What is on the screen
A boxed-in space, a sweet suspended on one or more ropes, and the creature sitting at the bottom. Scattered around are up to three stars, floating in fixed positions, and whatever obstacles the level has decided on — spikes, moving platforms, air pumps, floating bubbles.
The stars are the reason the game is a puzzle rather than a toy. Getting the sweet to the creature is usually easy. Getting it there having passed through all three stars on the way is the actual level, and it is a different problem entirely.
Playing a level from scratch
Do nothing first. The level is static until you touch it, and the whole design assumes you will spend that time reading it. Find the three stars, then work backwards: what path through them ends at the creature?
Then cut. Ropes are cut by dragging a finger across them, and the cut takes effect instantly, so the sweet's momentum at the moment you cut is the thing that matters. Cutting a rope while the sweet is swinging left sends it left; cutting at the bottom of the swing just drops it.
Most levels are a sequence of two or three cuts with a specific gap between them. If your first attempt sends the sweet somewhere sensible but misses a star, you usually have the right cuts in the wrong order, or the right order a beat too early.
Restarting is instant and free. It is meant to be used — the game expects six or seven attempts at a level and does not penalise any of them.
Controls
A drag across a rope cuts it. A tap inflates or pops a bubble, triggers an air cushion, or activates whatever the level has put in your way. There is nothing else. No inventory, no undo, no ability to move the sweet directly.
The one thing worth knowing is that you can cut more than one rope in a single drag if they cross your finger's path. Some late levels require exactly that, and they are noticeably harder if you have not realised it is possible.
What a session feels like
Calm. The absence of a timer changes the whole texture of the game — you can put the phone down mid-level, come back and the sweet is still hanging exactly where it was.
Levels are short and the difficulty rises slowly. It is a good game for ten minutes on public transport and an equally good one for an hour, which is rarer than it sounds.
Pointers for a first hour
- Read before you cut. The level is frozen until you act, and nothing else in the game gives you that advantage back.
- Plan the stars, not the sweet. The creature is easy to reach. The route through all three stars is the puzzle, and it is the only thing worth planning around.
- Timing is a cut, not a swipe. When a level needs a swing, the moment you cut matters more than where you cut.
- Restart early. Once a level has clearly gone wrong, watching it finish teaches you nothing. Restarts are instant.
- Two ropes, one drag. A single stroke can cut several ropes at once. Several later levels need it and never say so.
Quick Play Notes is a reference site. This page describes Cut the Rope from our own play; the three stars it mentions are markers inside the game. We have no commercial relationship with its publisher, and the title is named only to say which game this page explains.