Shard · How to play

How to play Shard

Pick a mode and a palette, then fill the canvas with color. Here's how each mode works, shown on real boards from the game.

Art Puzzle Shardoku Tools Accessibility Points and levels

Most of Shard is free. A few options, like Large boards, Hard puzzles and some palettes, come with Premium. See what's free and what's Premium.

Create

Paint it your way

There's nothing to match and no wrong answer. Choose a palette, tap a color, and tap any empty shard. When every shard has a color, the piece is finished and goes to your Gallery.

Change your mind as often as you like: the Eraser clears any shard you've filled.

How Art scores

Each shard you fill10
First time you use a color+20
Same color twice in a row+5
Same color three or more in a row+15 each
Finishing the canvas+5 per shard

Each shard scores once, so erasing and refilling doesn't add points. The finishing bonus is 90 on a Small canvas, 300 on Medium and 630 on Large.

Studio · Medium · in progress

Solve

Give touching shards different colors

Every shard needs a color, and shards that share an edge need different ones. Easy and Medium give you four colors; Hard gives you three.

You can try anything. If a color would match a neighbor, the game won't place it and the clashing shards flash. Every puzzle can be finished: with four colors that's guaranteed by the four-color theorem, and every three-color puzzle is checked before you see it.

Two colors, plus a few accents

Most of a puzzle can be painted with just two colors. Here and there, a shard already touches both of them, so it needs a third or fourth color. Those shards are your accents.

Each puzzle shows a target: the fewest accents the game could find. Finish at or under the target for the full accent bonus, or close to it for half. Some puzzles can be finished with two colors alone, and the game tells you when you've got one.

Hint in Puzzle

Hint lights up the shard with the fewest colors that still fit, a good place to go next. It doesn't cost any points.

EasyUnlimited
Medium3 per puzzle
Hard2 per puzzle

Puzzle scores shards the same way as Art. At the finish you get 5 points per shard plus any accent bonus, multiplied by the difficulty: Easy ×1, Medium ×1.5, Hard ×2.

A real Small puzzle, start to finish

An Easy puzzle from the game: 18 shards, Classic palette, target 2.

Two colors first

1 of 3

Yellow and Purple cover 16 of the 18 shards, and no two touching shards match.

Find the accents

2 of 3

Each outlined shard touches both Yellow and Purple, so neither main color fits there. They need a third color.

On target

3 of 3

Sky Blue fills both. That's 2 accents on a target of 2, so this puzzle earns the full accent bonus.

Accents 2 / target 2

What this puzzle pays at the finish

2 accents (on target)90 + 90 bonus = 180
3 accents (close)90 + 45 bonus = 135
4 or more90

Plus the points for each shard you fill. Bigger canvases and harder difficulties pay more.

Deduce

Sudoku, in color

Place each color once in every row, every column and every box. Each cell is two triangles that always share one color.

Some cells start filled. They're called givens, they have a light outline, and they stay put. Tap an empty cell, then tap a color to fill it. Once every cell of a color is placed, that color dims in the color row.

Every board has exactly one solution, so each move has a reason behind it. You never need to guess.

Size	Grid	Boxes	Colors
Small	4 × 4	2 × 2	4
Medium	6 × 6	2 × 3	6
Large	9 × 9	3 × 3	9

A real Small board, solved in five moves

An Easy board from the game, with five empty cells. Press Next step to solve it one move at a time.

Start

Moves so far

The habit to build: for an empty cell, check its row, its column and its box. When only one color can go there, place it, then look again. Each fill makes the next one easier.

Patterns to look for

The same four moves the game teaches in How to play, shown on the board above before any moves.

Naked single: only one color fits the cell

Row 1 already has Sky Blue and Vermilion, and column 1 has Purple. For the top-left cell, that leaves Yellow.

Yellow only

Hidden single: only one place fits the color

Row 2 still needs Sky Blue, and it has two empty cells. Column 3 already has Sky Blue at the top, so it can't go there. That leaves column 1.

Sky Blue → row 2, col 1

Cross-hatching: scan into a box

Look at the top-left box, outlined in green in the picture. It still needs Purple. Column 1 already has Purple lower down, which rules out the box's two cells in that column. The box's bottom-right cell is already filled. That leaves one cell for Purple.

Purple → row 1, col 2

Pairs

A made-up row on a larger board. Cells A and B can each only be Yellow or Purple, so those two colors belong to A and B. Cross them off everywhere else: C is left with Sky Blue, and D with Sky Blue or Vermilion.

Y Yellow · P Purple · S Sky Blue · V Vermilion

Hints and mistakes

Hint, when everything is right so far

Hint shows the right color for an empty cell for a moment. It doesn't fill it in. Each Hint like this takes 10 points off your final score.

When a cell has no color left

That means an earlier fill is wrong. Tap Hint and every wrong fill is outlined so you can fix it, or tap Restart to reset the board. Each wrong cell shown takes 30 points off, every time Hint shows it.

Shardoku scores each fill by the color's place in the palette: 10 for the first color, 20 for the second, and so on. Finishing adds a bonus from 100 (Small, Easy) up to 800 (Large, Hard).

Tools

Tools for every mode

Eraser

Tap Eraser, then tap a shard or cell you filled to clear it. Shardoku givens can't be erased. Points you've already earned stay.

Restart

Art clears your fills and points.
Puzzle clears your fills and points. Hints you've used still count.
Shardoku brings back the givens and clears points, hints and mistake charges.

Color help (Shardoku)

With a cell selected, colors already used in its row, column or box dim, and colors that fit get a ring. It's on to start; turn it off in the in-game Settings to see every color. Moves that break the rules are blocked either way.

How to play, in the game

The rules for each mode are in the game too: open Settings during play and tap How to play.

Accessibility

If some colors look alike to you

Shard is played in color, so the palette you pick matters. These palettes keep their colors far apart, including for the common kinds of color blindness, and Shardoku can add a shape to every color.

Puzzle and Shardoku: Classic · Art: Accessible · free

Classic and Accessible

One family of colors under two names: Classic is the default in Puzzle and Shardoku, and Accessible is its version for Art. The colors come from a set made for people with color blindness, and they stay clearly apart even when red and green are hard to tell apart.

Art, Puzzle, Shardoku up to Medium · free from level 3

Dusk

Its colors differ a lot in lightness, from deep navy to cream, so they hold up well even when hues look alike.

Harder to tell apart if reds and greens look similar to you: Pastel, Duet, Kaleidoscope and Studio each have colors that can look almost the same. And on any palette, the more colors a board uses, the closer they sit, so 9-color boards are the hardest.

Color symbols for Shardoku

Turn them on in Settings, under Accessibility. Every color gets its own shape, on the board and in the color row, so you can solve by shape as well as by color. They're especially handy on 9 × 9 boards. Symbols don't appear in images you share.

Shard also has light and dark themes: in Settings, choose Dark, Light or System.

Progress

Points and levels

Your points count when you finish a piece, in every mode. Your total raises your level, and new levels unlock new palettes.

Free play goes up to level 7, and your points keep counting past it. Premium removes the cap. Compare Free and Premium.

Help

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