Make a puzzle game with levels, hints and touch controls
A puzzle game is a set of rules, a sequence of levels that teaches them, and a hint system for when someone gets stuck. Anticode writes all three into one browser game that plays with touch or keys, saves progress on the player's device and, where the review service runs, gets clicked through at phone width before you see it.
Choose the kind of puzzle
| Type | Examples | The hard part to get right |
|---|---|---|
| Number grid | Sudoku, KenKen-style cages, Kakuro | Every puzzle has exactly one solution |
| Sliding and rotating | 15-puzzle, pipe rotation, tile slide | Shuffles that are actually solvable |
| Pattern logic | Nonograms, light-up grids, star placement | Clues that can be solved without guessing |
| Movement | Box pushing, ice sliding, one-line drawing | Levels with no unwinnable states, or an obvious undo |
| Matching | Colour sort, tile match, link-the-pairs | Enough variety that level 30 isn't level 3 again |
Pick one before you open any puzzle game maker. Games that combine three mechanics usually teach none of them well. If you want variety, vary the board within one rule set: bigger grids, new obstacles, a move limit.
Generated or hand-made levels
Some puzzles can be generated well by code. A sudoku generator starts from a full valid grid and removes numbers while checking, after each removal, that only one solution remains. A sliding puzzle is scrambled by making random legal moves from the solved state, which guarantees it can be undone; scrambling the tiles freely makes half of all boards impossible.
Other puzzles are much better hand-designed. Box-pushing and line-drawing levels come alive when a designer places one cunning obstacle, and random layouts rarely do that. For these, ask for a set number of levels with a clear difficulty order, and treat the first build as a draft: play them, then ask for changes to the ones that are too easy or too obscure.
Either way, the first three levels should be tutorials in disguise. Level one shows the rule with almost no way to fail; level two adds one twist; level three asks the player to combine them.
Hints that don't spoil it
- Nudge: highlight the area of the board to look at.
- Rule reminder: name the technique ("this row only has one place for a 7").
- Reveal one move, and count it, so players who finish without hints can see that they did.
Unlimited undo matters as much as hints. Being stuck three moves from a dead end and having to restart the whole level is where people close the tab.
Controls on phone and keyboard
A puzzle has to work with a thumb and with arrow keys. That means targets large enough to tap on a 360-pixel screen, which limits how big a grid can be before it needs zooming; selection that's visible when you move with the keyboard; and swipe gestures that don't fight the page scrolling. A 9 by 9 sudoku fits a phone; a 25 by 25 nonogram doesn't without a zoom or a pan mode, so mention which sizes you want.
How Anticode builds and checks it
Describe the puzzle, the number of levels and the feel: "A pipe rotation puzzle with 40 hand-ordered levels from 4 by 4 to 8 by 8, a move counter, three hints per level, unlimited undo and a calm, dark look with soft sound when pipes connect." The model writes the game in one HTML document: the board drawn in canvas or SVG, the rules and solvability checks in plain JavaScript, sound generated in code. It's told every game opens on a start screen with a clear start button and visible controls, since keys only reach the game after someone clicks or taps it.
Before the build is shown, Anticode runs its own code checks with one automatic repair pass. When the review service is available, it also opens the new game in a headless browser at phone and laptop widths, takes screenshots and clicks through it; the Critic sees the screenshots and any errors and fixes what it finds. That catches a board that overflows a small screen or a start button that does nothing. It doesn't prove level 37 can be solved, so playing your levels is still your job.
Saving progress, and the limits
Unlocked levels, best move counts and settings save in the player's browser. There's no account, so progress doesn't follow a player to another device.
- No online leaderboards or comparing times with friends.
- No daily puzzle that changes from a server; a daily puzzle can still be chosen from the date in the page.
- No outside sprite sheets or images loaded from the web; visuals are drawn in code or come from images you add to the build.
For word-based puzzles see the word game maker; for a room of puzzles against the clock, the online escape room. The self-review feature page explains the screenshot pass in more detail.
Questions people ask
Can I add more levels later?
Yes. Ask in a sentence ("add 10 harder levels after level 40") and the game updates. Players keep their progress if the saved format stays the same.
Will it work on an iPad and a desktop?
Apps are built to work from a 360-pixel phone up to a wide desktop, with touch controls on touch screens and keyboard support elsewhere.
Can I sell the game?
You can put a buy button pointing at a payment link from your own provider, but the game can't unlock paid levels by itself because it can't check a payment.