Inkwell

How to play

Inkwell is played one sheet at a time, and each sheet gives you a limited number of strokes. Tap a cluster of touching marks of the same silhouette to clear it in a single stroke; the marks above settle down and fresh ones flow in. Score as much as you can before your strokes run out.

But the ink has a life of its own: every few strokes it spreads, seeding new marks and the occasional blot. Keep the page clean and you'll earn a tidiness bonus when the sheet is done.

The marks

There is only one ink, drawn in eight silhouettes chosen never to read alike: strokes, hollows, solids and a compound eye. Only like matches like, so you're always hunting touching runs of a single shape. If the page ever runs out of matches, the ink swirls and redraws, so you are never stuck. More silhouettes join the page as the sheets grow larger.

On the page

Keep the page clean

Every sheet ends one of three ways: you spend your last stroke, you press the wax seal to stop early, or the blots overrun the page and ruin it. The first two are yours to time, and that choice is where the game lives.

The writing desk

Big erasures earn tools, dealt in a fixed rotation and carried between sheets. Clear 6–8 marks for a basic tool; clear 9 or more (or survive a whole sheet) for a premium one.

Basic tools keep the page tidy:

• Solvent: erase any one mark, to split a stubborn cluster or reach a gilded mark.
• Blotter: lift a single blot off the page.
• Wash: rinse every blot inside a 3×3 area you tap.

Premium tools buy you room and points:

• Quill: adds three strokes to the current sheet.
• Gold nib: your next erasure scores ×3 (×9 stacked on a gilded mark).
• Fixative: blots stop spreading for six strokes.

Tips

• Hold out for a bigger cluster: the score climbs with the square of its size.
• Deal with blots early, before a spread turns them into a ruined sheet.
• Save Solvent for freeing a gilded mark stranded among the wrong silhouette.
• Chase a 9-mark clear, or a full clean sheet, for the premium tools.