Rulebooks/Super Ace
Rulebook 02 · Tile-clearing puzzle
How to play Super Ace
A five-column board of symbol tiles that you clear by matching, with everything above a cleared tile falling down to fill the gap. The falling is the whole game: a well-chosen match sets off two or three more clears you never had to tap for.
- Game type
- Casual match-and-cascade puzzle, single player
- One round
- Two to four minutes per board
- Input
- Tap a tile, tap a matching tile; drag to swap adjacent tiles
- Attention
- Moderate. Turn-based, so it pauses cleanly
- Score
- Chain length and a per-board clear percentage, in-game only
What is on the screen
The board is five columns wide and four rows deep, filled with flat symbol tiles — six ordinary shapes in different colours, plus the occasional ace tile the game is named after. A chain meter runs along the top and fills as consecutive clears resolve without you tapping again. Below the board sit two support buttons: a reshuffle that rearranges the current board once per round, and an undo that reverses your last move.
Tiles are cleared in groups of three or more of the same symbol, either in a row, in a column, or in an L or T shape that connects the two. Cleared tiles vanish, the tiles above them slide down, and fresh tiles drop in from the top of the column. If those new arrivals happen to land in a matching group, they clear on their own and the chain meter ticks up.
Playing a board from scratch
Seven steps, in the order the game presents them.
- 1
Read the board bottom-up before touching anything
Because tiles fall downward, changes at the bottom of a column ripple through everything above it, while a clear at the top row changes almost nothing. Scan the two lowest rows first. Beginners scan top-down out of habit and miss the moves that matter.
- 2
Make your first match with a tap-tap
Tap one tile to select it — it lifts slightly and gets a thin outline — then tap a matching symbol in the same row or column. If a group of three or more exists between them, the whole group clears. If not, the selection simply moves to the second tile, and nothing else changes.
- 3
Use the drag-swap for tiles that are one square out of place
Dragging a tile onto an adjacent tile swaps the two. A swap only completes if it creates a group; otherwise the tiles spring back. This is the move you use to finish a group that is sitting one column away from being three in a row.
- 4
Let the cascade finish before tapping again
After a clear the board resolves for two or three seconds: tiles fall, new ones drop in, secondary groups clear themselves. Taps during that window are ignored on most builds and mistimed on the rest. Watch the chain meter and wait for it to settle.
- 5
Understand the ace tile
The ace tile is an opener rather than a scoring tile. Clearing a group that includes one also clears the two tiles directly beneath it in the same column, which is usually how a stubborn bottom row finally comes free. Ace tiles are scarce, so it is worth keeping one in reserve for a column you cannot otherwise reach instead of using it on a group you could clear anyway.
- 6
Keep the reshuffle for a genuinely stuck board
You get one reshuffle per board. A board with three or four available moves is not stuck, it is just awkward. Save it for the moment nothing at all can be matched, which does happen once the board is mostly cleared and only stragglers remain.
- 7
Finish the board or hit the clear target
A board ends when you clear the target percentage shown at the top — usually eighty per cent — or when no match remains and your reshuffle is spent. Either way the next board loads immediately and your longest chain carries forward as a session best.
Controls
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tap a tile | Selects it. Tapping a second matching tile clears the group if one exists. |
| Drag a tile | Swaps it with the adjacent tile. Reverts if the swap creates no group. |
| Long press | Highlights every tile sharing that symbol, which is the fastest way to find a fourth match. |
| Reshuffle button | Rearranges the current board. One use per board, no refills. |
| Undo button | Reverses the last move, including its cascade. Unavailable once a new board loads. |
What a session feels like
Pacing
Nothing here is timed, so the game waits for you indefinitely. That makes it the most interruptible of the six titles we cover — you can put the phone down mid-board and pick it up an hour later with the position intact. The satisfying part is a four-link cascade you set up on purpose; the flat part is the two or three obvious clears you make while hunting for one.
Sessions tend to run longer than you plan, not because of pressure but because the next board loads the moment the last one ends. If you want a fixed session length, decide on a number of boards before you start.
Pointers for a first hour
- Clear from the bottom. A group cleared in the lowest row drops four tiles per column; the same group in the top row drops nothing.
- Use long press constantly. Highlighting a symbol turns a slow visual hunt into a one-second check, and it costs nothing.
- Save the ace tile for a locked column. Its value is the two tiles it opens underneath, not the group it happens to sit in.
- Watch one column at a time. Trying to read all five at once is how boards start to look random when they are not.
- Undo is for misreads, not for outcomes. A cascade that fizzled was not a mistake; a swap you made in the wrong column was.
- Stop after a completed board. Quitting mid-board on most builds abandons the position, which wastes the setup you just built.
Quick Play Notes is a reference site. This page describes Super Ace from our own play; the chain meter and clear percentage it mentions are display numbers inside the game and mean nothing outside it. We have no commercial relationship with the game's publisher, and the title is named solely to identify what this page explains.