Visual memory

The exact rules

Each level lights a set of tiles for one second, then hides them, and you click every tile that was lit. The pattern always contains the level number plus two tiles: 3 tiles at level 1, 7 at level 5, 12 at level 10. The grid grows underneath you as well, 3 by 3 for the first two levels, 4 by 4 from level 3, 5 by 5 from level 6, and 6 by 6 from level 10 onward.

Mistakes are forgiven in threes. Wrong clicks within a level are counted, and the third wrong click costs you a life and restarts that level with a brand new pattern. You have three lives for the whole run; lose them all and the game ends, with your score being the last level you fully completed. Two wrong clicks carry no lasting penalty at all, they do not even follow you to the next level.

How to play it like a grinder

The one second exposure is too short to rehearse tile positions one at a time. What survives the blackout is shape: an L, a diagonal, a cluster in a corner. So do not try to store nine coordinates, store two or three shapes and their anchors. Symmetric and edge-hugging patterns feel easier for exactly this reason, and messy center-heavy ones are where lives go to die.

Here is the tip that follows from the miss rule: click your certain tiles first, fast, before the memory decays, then slow way down. Once you are down to the last two or three uncertain tiles you still have a budget of two free wrong clicks, and an educated guess anchored to the shape you stored ("the arm of the L extended one more") is usually better than 50/50. Spend the budget deliberately. Never spend the third click on a guess unless you have lives to burn, because that third miss resets the level with a pattern you have not seen. Also note that a replayed level generates a new random pattern, so there is nothing to remember from the failed attempt; clear your head and treat it fresh.

Typical scores

Most people top out between levels 8 and 11, which is around ten lit tiles on a 5 by 5 grid. The jump to the 6 by 6 board at level 10 is where runs usually end: tile count and grid area grow at the same time, and shapes get harder to compress. Visual span itself trains slowly; what improves quickly with practice is your shape vocabulary, which is why your third session will beat your first.

Design notes

The exposure time is fixed at one second no matter the level, so difficulty scales purely through pattern size and grid size. Patterns are drawn at random with no symmetry guarantee and no repeat protection between levels; a lucky symmetric draw genuinely is an easier level, and that variance is part of the game. Correct tiles light up as you find them, so you always know how many remain from the on-screen count. Your best level is stored locally in your browser, there is no server or leaderboard, and the game never shows you the answer after a miss, which is deliberate: seeing the solution would train you to check your work instead of trusting the shape.