Rulebooks/Ice
Rulebook 05 · Tap puzzle
How to play an ice game
A tap puzzle on a frozen pond. The board is a wall of coloured ice blocks with a small penguin perched somewhere inside it. You clear blocks by tapping a group of two or more of the same colour, and the blocks above settle down into the gaps. The goal is to open a path so the penguin can reach the water at the bottom — using as few taps as you can.
Tap-to-clear ice puzzles come in many versions, and the rules underneath them barely move. This page describes the rules they have in common rather than one publisher's version, so where they differ — a melt button, an undo limit — the page says so.
- Game type
- Casual tap-to-clear logic puzzle, single player
- One board
- Thirty seconds to two minutes, untimed
- Input
- Tap a connected group of same-colour blocks to remove it
- Attention
- Light planning; the board only changes when you tap
- Progress
- Boards cleared and taps used
What is on the screen
The board is a grid of coloured ice blocks. A penguin sits somewhere among them, and open water runs along the bottom edge. Below the board a tap counter keeps count. When you tap a connected group of matching blocks they clear, and every block above them slides straight down to fill the space — which quietly rearranges what is next to what, and therefore which groups exist for your next tap.
Only groups count: a block with no same-colour neighbour cannot be tapped and just sits there. So the board is really a sequence of choices about which group to remove first, since each removal reshapes the ones that follow.
Clearing a board from scratch
Five steps. There is not much to this one, which is the point.
- 1
Find the penguin and the water below it
Before tapping, locate the penguin and trace roughly downward to the water. That line is the path you are trying to open; blocks off to the sides only matter if clearing them helps the penguin drop.
- 2
Tap a group of two or more
Tap any connected run of the same colour and it clears. A single block on its own is inert — if nothing happens when you tap, it had no matching neighbour and you need a different group.
- 3
Watch the board settle after each tap
When a group clears, the blocks above drop down. Let that settle before choosing again, because two colours that were not touching a moment ago may now form a group, and one you were planning to tap may have broken up.
- 4
Clear from under the penguin
The penguin drops as the blocks beneath it are removed. Work the column under it rather than the edges, so each tap actually lowers the penguin toward the water instead of just tidying a corner. Large groups change the board the most when they clear and settle, so removing them first tends to open up new matches for free. Small two-block groups are better saved for fine adjustments near the end.
- 5
Try not to strand a lone block
A single block with no matching neighbour cannot be removed, so avoid clearing around one and leaving it marooned on a ledge under the penguin. If you do, look for a group above it whose drop will give it a neighbour again. Once the path is open and the penguin slides into the water, the board is solved and the next one loads. Nothing carries over except which boards you have cleared and your best tap counts.
Controls
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tap a group | Removes a connected run of two or more same-colour blocks. |
| Undo | Steps back your last tap, before the settle is built on. Steps back your last tap, before the settle is built on. No limit on any build we tried. |
| Reset | Returns the board to its opening layout to try a different order. |
| Melt | Removes one lone block as a rare, optional help on some builds. |
What a session feels like
Pacing
Gentle and bite-size. Nothing moves until you tap, so a board is a handful of unhurried choices with a small, clear finish. It is a good one-board-at-a-time game — easy to open for a minute, and it never penalises you for setting it down mid-board.
Because each board is self-contained and untimed, there is nothing to protect between boards. A board you cannot open simply resets to its starting layout, so a wrong order costs only another look.
Pointers for a first hour
- Clear under the penguin, not the edges. Only the blocks beneath it lower it toward the water; side-tidying wastes taps.
- Big groups first. The largest groups reshape the board most when they settle, often handing you fresh matches for nothing.
- Avoid stranding lone blocks. A single block cannot be tapped, so try not to leave one marooned in the penguin's path.
- Undo is free. If a tap breaks up a group you wanted, step it back and take them in a better order.
- Taps, not time, are the budget. There is no clock; the only thing to spend carefully is the number of taps.
Quick Play Notes is a reference site. This page explains the rules shared by tap-to-clear ice puzzles rather than one publisher's version, which is why it names no title. The tap counter it describes is a display number inside the game. We have no commercial relationship with any game's publisher.