Shatterglass: Zen Puzzle

A pane of coloured glass drifts down a stained glass window. You choose where it lands, it settles into place, and the window fills a little more. That is the whole game.

There is one twist, and it runs against everything other puzzle games have taught you.

THREE IN A LINE IS THE COST, NOT THE REWARD

Line up three of the same colour and they shatter. In most puzzle games that is the point. Here it is the mistake. Every window gives you a small shatter allowance, and most give you exactly one. Spend it and the window comes apart, and you begin it again.

So you are not hunting for matches. You are placing glass carefully, watching the colours already down, and finding the spot that does not complete a line. It takes about thirty seconds to understand and considerably longer to stop doing it by reflex.

WATCH WHAT IS ABOVE THE LINE

When glass shatters, everything above falls into the gap, and if it lands three in a row it shatters too. One careless placement can run a chain several waves deep, and every wave spends another mark. Reading what sits above a line before you break it is where the skill lives.

ONE HUNDRED WINDOWS, NINE CHAPTERS

From The Nave to The Chancel, the windows grow from small and forgiving to genuinely demanding. They are not hand placed on a difficulty curve by guesswork; every one was generated and then verified solvable, and ordered so that a hard window is followed by an easier one. Each is a different silhouette, in its own colours, with its own allowance.

Finish a window and it joins your collection, lit. Finish one without spending your whole allowance and it earns another facet. Finish one flawlessly and it earns them all.

MADE TO BE QUIET

Every column is a glass key you can play, tuned to a major scale, so aiming makes music rather than noise. There is no timer counting down at you, no lives to run out, no streak to protect, and nothing asking you to come back tomorrow. Sessions are a minute or two, one handed, and end when you want them to.

Six glass palettes, all free from the start. No advertisements, no in app purchases, no account, and no internet connection required. Your progress is saved on your device and nowhere else.

Fill the window. Mind the lines.