Ring Chains guide: rules, chapters, hints and tips

Ring Chains is the third mode in Ringol, next to Ring by ring and Full box. Each level is one board you clear by swiping. It has no timer and no move limit, and Undo is free, so you can try things out. This guide covers the rules, how the levels get harder, how hints work, and a few habits that help.

A Ring Chains board: rings of different sizes, one in each well of a shaped tray — A Ring Chains board. Each well holds one ring, and a ring's size is its number.

The board

A level is a tray of wells. The tray isn't always a rectangle. Early levels come as a ring of wells, an arrow, stairs, a heart or an hourglass. Every well holds exactly one ring.

Hidden in the board are sets. A set is a run of rings from some size down to 1, like 4, 3, 2, 1, laid through wells that touch side by side. Only up, down, left and right count. Diagonals don't. Every ring on the board belongs to exactly one set, so a cleared board means you found all of them.

No ring has a number on it, at any level. You read the order from the ring sizes: the 1 is the smallest ring, the 2 is a step bigger, and so on.

How a swipe works

Put your finger on a well and drag through neighbouring wells.
If you start on a big ring, each next ring has to be one size smaller, and the chain ends at the 1. You can also start on a 1 and go up, one size bigger each step.
Drag back onto the well before the last one to take the last step back.
Let go once the chain is a whole set: at least three rings, each size once, from the biggest down to 1. The set bursts and its wells empty.

Clear every ring and the level is won: "Board clear!". Then tap Next level.

Scoring

A set pays more the longer it is. The game pays 25 × (rings in the set)² ÷ 4, rounded down. That's 56 points for a set of 3, 100 for 4, 156 for 5 and 225 for 6. A set whose rings all share one colour pays triple, as the tip on level 15 says. Rings come in five colours. Points never decide whether you win: a cleared board is a win however you scored it.

Traps: why order matters

This is the actual puzzle. Many boards have more than one place where a run like 3-2-1 fits, and a set that looks fine can belong to the wrong rings. Burst it, and the rings left behind may be split up so that a set can never form again. The game's own help card says it: "the wrong set can leave rings that can never meet."

If you get stuck you'll see "No set left. Undo!". Undo is free and has no limit. It takes back sets one by one, including the points they paid, so you can't farm points with Undo. Restart deals the same board again.

How the levels get harder

The game ships 600 levels, all made ahead of time and all checked to be clearable.

Levels 1-15 are hand-made, each with a short line that teaches one idea: short 3-2-1 sets, shaped boards, "Find the 1s first: every set ends at one", long sets through a narrow middle, and the one-colour bonus.
From level 16 the boards get bigger. Sets are 3 to 5 rings long at first, then 4 to 5, then 4 to 6 on later boards.
Traps get more common. Each level is the trickiest of several generated boards. By the game's count, about half of all possible first swipes on the hand-made levels are traps. On the late levels it's about 85 %.
Every fifth level is a colour level, where a set's rings tend to share a colour. That's a good chance at triple points.

After level 600 the game keeps going. It reuses earlier boards, each mirrored and with its colours swapped, so you never run out of levels.

Chapters and themes

Levels come in chapters of ten. Each chapter has its own backdrop: Dawn, Ocean, Forest, Dusk desert, Starry night, Aurora, Coral reef, Snow, Meadow and Embers. After Embers the cycle starts over. Within a chapter the colours shift a little from level to level, so no two levels in a row look the same. Each theme has a light and a dark version. The top bar shows the chapter and theme, and the arrows next to the level number let you replay any level you've already reached. A level you've won doesn't count again when you replay it.

Hints

Hint lights up a set that is safe to take now, meaning the board can still be cleared after it, and draws a gold line along it. You start with 3 hints and get one more for every 10 levels you win. When you run out you can watch an ad for a hint, when one is available, at most three times per level. If the board can't be cleared any more (or the game can't tell quickly), the hint tells you to Undo, and that answer costs you no hint.

Tips

Find the 1s first. Every set ends at a 1, so the smallest rings show you how many sets there are and roughly where they lie.
Start where there's only one choice. A ring in a corner or at the tip of a narrow part has few neighbours. When a ring can join a set in only one way, take that set early.
Watch the narrow parts. In an hourglass or a thin bridge, one wrong set can cut the board in two. Ask yourself which rings must cross that spot.
Count the big rings. On boards with long sets, the biggest rings are rare. Each one is the start of a set, so plan back from it.
Use Undo to test ideas. It's free, so try a set, look at what's left, and take it back if it looks wrong.
Go for one colour when it's free. If two sets are equally safe, take the one in a single colour for triple points. Clearing the board still comes first.

Related guides

New to the game? Start with how to play Ringol. If you like slow logic puzzles, the Ring by ring guide covers the other level mode, and puzzles and calm explains why the game has no timers. Ready to try? Play Ringol for free on the web, Google Play or the App Store.

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