Arrow Escape

About this game

Arrow Escape is a tap-to-clear logic puzzle built around one rule you learn in a single move: an arrow leaves the board when the corridor between it and the edge it points at is empty. Tap a clear one and it launches, trailing light. Tap a blocked one and it lunges, recoils, and shows you exactly which arrow stopped it. Clear the whole board to finish the level. The boards are generated in reverse — every arrow is placed only where its own exit was already open — so each one is guaranteed solvable before you ever see it, and there is no such thing as a dead end. Removing an arrow can only ever open paths, never close them, which means you cannot strand yourself no matter what order you tap in. That is the quiet promise of the game: the only thing you can get wrong is misreading a corridor, and the only cost is a moment. Arrows come in four colours, and clearing two of the same colour in a row starts a chain that multiplies everything that follows, so the relaxing version and the high-scoring version are the same game played at different speeds. Levels grow from a five-square grid to a nine-square one as you go, and a fresh eight-square board arrives every day with a streak to keep. Play with one finger or one mouse button, on any screen, with nothing to install.

Controls

Tap or click an arrow to launch it. That is the whole control scheme — there is nothing to drag, aim or time.

• Hint highlights an arrow that can leave right now.
• New deals a fresh board; Daily switches to today's shared puzzle.
• Mode cycles Zen, then Daily, then Drop.

How to play

Every arrow points at one of the four edges. An arrow can leave only when every square between it and that edge is empty — tap it and it flies off.

Clearing the board

• If something is in the way the arrow recoils and the arrow blocking it flashes, so you can see what to clear first.
• Keep going until the board is empty.
• You cannot lose: any arrow that can legally leave is always safe to tap, in any order. That holds in Zen and in the Daily. Drop is the mode where it stops holding.

Chains

• Clearing two arrows of the same colour back to back starts a chain, and each further arrow in that chain is worth more, so look for runs of one colour rather than tapping the first thing you see.

Board shapes

• From level four the board stops being a square and takes a shape — a heart, a diamond, a cross, an arrow, a ring.
• Squares outside the shape hold no arrow and block nothing, so an arrow pointing across a gap flies straight over it.

Drop

• Drop is the one mode you can lose. After every launch the remaining arrows fall to the bottom of their column.
• That means clearing the wrong arrow can drop another one into a corridor and strand it, so here the order really does matter.
• You get three lives. Strand the board and you lose one and the level is dealt again.
• Every Drop board is checked by a solver before you see it, so a board that cannot be cleared is never dealt.

Read the full Arrow Escape rules and strategy →