Mochi Paint

About Mochi Paint

Mochi Paint is a cosy Flood-It puzzle. A little white mochi sits permanently in the top-left tile, and the connected patch of same-coloured tiles around it is your flood. When you tap any tile, your entire flood instantly repaints to that tile's colour, and every neighbouring tile that now matches gets pulled into the patch. So you do not pick a tile to keep - you pick a colour, and your corner grows outward in a glossy ripple. Clear the level by turning every tile on the board into one single colour.

The catch is your paint budget. The counter at the top of the screen (a paint-drop pip) is how many taps you have left, and each repaint spends one drop; tapping the colour you are already on is a free no-op and costs nothing. That budget is not arbitrary - for every board the game runs a greedy auto-solver and sets your allowance to that solution length plus a small slack of one to three taps. So a perfect run is always possible, but loose play runs you dry and pops the "Out of paint!" card, where you simply retry the same board.

There are twenty hand-tuned levels grouped into five sweet worlds of four each: Berry, Citrus, Mint, Ocean, and Galaxy. The grid starts at a roomy 5x5 with four colours and climbs to a tight 9x9 with all six colours, and the palette widens as you go. Galaxy swaps the pastel backdrop for a dark, twinkling-star sky for its finale stretch. From the Mint world on, sleepy grey stone tiles appear on the board: stones never flood and never change colour, so they wall off regions and force you to route the flood around them. The generator only places a stone where it would not cut the board in two, so every authored level stays fully reachable.

Once you clear all twenty curated puzzles, Mochi Paint keeps going with an endless mode that generates a brand-new board for every level number past twenty. Endless picks up right at the curated finale's difficulty rather than resetting - stones are on from the very first endless board, the grid ramps from 8x8 up to 11x11 as the numbers climb, and the stone count grows with it, while the slack stays tight. Each board is freshly seeded by its level number, so no two are alike and there is always one more to paint.

How to play Mochi Paint

1. Your flood is the patch of same-coloured tiles touching the mochi in the top-left corner. Look at the colours bordering that patch.
2. Tap a tile of a different colour. Your whole flood repaints to that colour and instantly absorbs every neighbouring tile of the new shade, spreading the corner outward.
3. Watch the paint-drop counter at the top - each repaint costs one drop. Tapping a colour you are already flooded with is free and changes nothing.
4. From the Mint world on, route around the grey stone tiles: they never flood or recolour, so the flood has to reach the cells behind them another way.
5. Make the entire board a single colour before your drops run out to clear the level and earn its three stars.
6. On the win card tap Next for the following puzzle, or open the levels menu to jump between the five worlds or start endless mode.

Controls

Tips & strategy

• Each turn, the colour that absorbs the most new tiles is usually the right one - that is exactly the rule the built-in solver uses to set your budget.
• If you sit idle for about three seconds, or make a tap that does nothing, the board pulses a glowing ring around the best cells to tap next. Use it when you are stuck.
• Think a move ahead: a smaller grab now sometimes lines up a much bigger swallow on your next tap than greedily taking the largest patch every time.
• The drop pip turns red when you have two or fewer taps left - that is your cue that there is no slack remaining for a wasted move.
• Stones split the board into pockets. Plan a path that opens a route into each walled-off region rather than leaving tiles stranded behind the grey blocks.
• Tapping a colour you are already flooded with is free, so there is no penalty for studying the board - only real recolours spend a drop.
• On the bigger Ocean, Galaxy, and endless boards, work the largest colour clusters toward your flood early so they are easy to absorb in one sweep later.

Game features

• A Flood-It colour puzzle where you repaint a corner flood, not individual tiles, to swallow same-coloured neighbours.
• Twenty hand-tuned levels across five themed worlds: Berry, Citrus, Mint, Ocean, and Galaxy, four puzzles each.
• Grids and palettes that ramp from a gentle 5x5 with four colours up to a 9x9 with all six colours.
• Sleepy grey stone tiles from the Mint world on that never flood, splitting the board and demanding smarter routes.
• A paint-drop budget set by a built-in greedy solver, so every level is guaranteed beatable with a few taps of slack.
• A stuck-help hint that glows the best cells to tap after a few idle seconds or a dead tap.
• An endless mode past level twenty that ramps grids 8x8 to 11x11 with growing stones, freshly seeded per level number.
• A glossy candy look with a corner mochi, pop ripples, win sparkles, and a dark twinkling-star Galaxy backdrop.
• Synthesized Web Audio - a rising flood blip pitched by how full the board is, a win arpeggio, plus looping music.
• Plays instantly in the browser on phone, tablet, and desktop, with unlocked levels and stars saved on your device.

The corner that swallows the board

What sells Mochi Paint is the moment the colour lands. You never paint one tile; you tap a colour and the whole corner patch flips to it, dragging in every matching neighbour at once. The repaint does not just appear, it rolls outward from the mochi in the top-left, cells springing up in order of how far they sit from that corner, so a big absorb reads as a physical wave crossing the grid. A white sheen traces the rim of the flood the entire time, so at any glance you can tell exactly which tiles are already yours and which are still loose territory waiting to be claimed.

The cleverest design choice is that the game already knows the answer. Before each board loads it runs a greedy solver over those exact tiles, counts the recolours, and hands you that count plus one to three spare drops. So your budget is never a round number pulled from a hat; it is the optimal solution length with a sliver of forgiveness baked in. Running dry never punishes you with lost progress either, only an Out of paint card and the same board again. Studying costs nothing, since re-tapping the colour you already hold is a free no-op, and a wasted move is the only real currency you can spend badly.

Stalling is handled with unusual grace. Sit idle three seconds, or make a tap that does nothing, a stone, the edge, your own colour, and the board pulses a high-contrast ring around the very cells the solver would grab next. Even a fumble becomes a lesson rather than a dead end. The mechanical step is the sleepy grey stone, arriving in Mint with its own half-shut eyes painted on; it never floods and never recolours, so it walls the grid into pockets you have to route into. Galaxy drops the pastel sky for a twinkling dark backdrop that makes the candy tiles read like neon.

Listen and you can hear the board closing. The flood blip pitches higher the fuller your patch gets, so a near-complete sweep lands almost an octave above your opening tap, then a five-note arpeggio crowns the clear. It suits a planning mood more than any particular age: the early worlds are genuinely unhurried, while the late 8x8 and 9x9 boards with single-drop slack ask you to look a move ahead, since a smaller grab now sometimes sets up a far larger swallow next. Past level twenty the generated boards keep stones on and the grids creeping from 8x8 toward 11x11, freshly seeded so the texture never settles.