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Mochi Rect
Carve a candy grid into rectangles so every glossy numbered chip ends up alone in a box that covers exactly its number of cells.
About Mochi Rect
Mochi Rect is a drag-to-draw version of Shikaku, the Japanese pencil puzzle whose name means 'divide by box.' Each board is a grid of cells with a scatter of glossy numbered candy chips, and the goal is to slice the whole grid into rectangles. Two rules cover everything: every rectangle must hold exactly one chip, and the chip's number must equal how many cells the rectangle covers. A chip showing 6 belongs in a rectangle of six cells — one-by-six, two-by-three, three-by-two, or six-by-one — and the level is finished the instant every cell on the board sits inside one tidy box and no chip is left sharing or stranded.
You never type a number or tap individual cells. You press on a starting cell and drag to a far cell, and the rectangle spans everything between them, snapped to whole cells. A live preview follows your finger with the running area printed big in the middle: it glows in the world's candy color when the box wraps a single chip whose number matches the area, turns amber when one chip is inside but the size is wrong, and goes red when the box catches zero chips or two. Release to commit the box, and the area count stays tucked in its corner. Each committed box that turns out solved gets a bright glowing border in the world color; an unsolved one stays soft red, so a quick glance tells you which boxes still need fixing.
The whole game is no-fail and undo-friendly. There are no timers and no lives, dragging a new box over an old one simply replaces every box it overlaps so re-drawing never gets fiddly, and a quick tap on any committed box lifts it back off. R or Backspace clears the entire board (there is also a Clear all entry in the settings panel) so you can restart a tangled region from scratch. Boxes chime at a pitch that rises with their size, and when the grid finally tiles correctly the win is celebrated with a screen flash, a little shake, sparkles bursting from every rectangle, and a five-note jingle before the level card slides in with three stars.
How to play Mochi Rect
- Read the candy chips: each number tells you how many cells the rectangle around that chip must cover.
- Press on a cell and drag to another cell; the preview box spans the two and shows its running area as a big number.
- Aim for the world-colored glow — that means your box holds exactly one chip and its area matches that chip's number — then release to lock it in.
- If a box came out wrong, tap it to lift it off, or just drag a corrected box over it to replace what it overlaps.
- Keep carving until every cell belongs to a box and each chip sits alone in a correctly sized one; the badge at the top counts covered cells as X/Y.
- When the board is perfectly tiled it completes on its own, awards three stars, and offers Next for the following puzzle.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Drag (touch or mouse) | Draw a rectangle from the first cell to the cell you release on |
| Tap a committed rectangle | Lift that rectangle back off the board |
| Drag over existing rectangles | Replace every box the new one overlaps |
| R or Backspace | Clear all rectangles and start the board fresh |
| Space or Enter | On the win card, jump straight to the next puzzle |
| Settings (gear) button | Open level select, the sound toggle, and Clear all |
Tips & strategy
- Corner and edge chips are the safest first boxes — a chip in a corner has very few directions its rectangle can stretch, so its shape is often forced.
- Chase the small numbers first: a 2 has only two possible shapes and a 3 only two, so locking those in carves away cells that pin down the bigger boxes.
- Factor the number to see its shape options — a 6 is one-by-six, two-by-three, three-by-two, or six-by-one — then picture which one actually fits the gap.
- If your dragged box glows amber it means one chip is inside but the area is off, so just nudge an edge a cell at a time until it flips to the world color.
- A red box has the wrong number of chips (zero or two); shrink or shift it so it captures exactly one chip, never two.
- Watch the X/Y covered-cell badge at the top — when it reads the full grid size and no boxes are red, you have solved it.
- Stuck on a knot? Tap individual boxes to peel them, or hit R to wipe the whole board; nothing is ever lost and re-drawing costs you nothing.
Game features
- True Shikaku rules with a touch-native twist: tile the entire grid into rectangles by dragging, one chip per box, area equal to the chip's number.
- 20 hand-tuned levels across five candy worlds — Berry, Citrus, Mint, Ocean, and Galaxy — ramping from a roomy 5x5 up to a dense 10x10.
- Endless mode past level 20 that generates fresh boards forever, climbing in grid size up to 13x13 and pinning the cut density near its cap so puzzles never go flat.
- Every board is built backward from a real rectangle partition and validated for full coverage, matching areas, and one chip per box, so there is always a clean answer.
- A live drag preview that prints the running cell count and color-codes each box — world-color glow, amber, or red — so you can read a move before committing it.
- Friendly no-fail flow: no timers or lives, tap to undo any box, drag-over-to-replace, and a one-touch Clear all by key or in the settings panel.
- Per-box audio that chimes brighter the larger the rectangle, plus a five-note victory jingle, sparkles, flash, and shake on every solve.
- Saved progress and three-star wins per level in a level-select grid, kept privately in your own browser with a one-tap mute.
Game details
- Title
- Mochi Rect
- Genre
- Logic puzzle
- Players
- 1 player
- Controls
- Drag from one cell to another to draw a rectangle; tap a rectangle to lift it (mouse or touch)
- Platforms
- Web browser, Android, iOS (no download)
- Developer
- Anime Mochi
- Released
- 2026
- Last updated
- June 2026
- Price
- Free to play
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is Shikaku?
Shikaku ('divide by box') is a Japanese logic puzzle where you split a grid into rectangles so each rectangle contains exactly one number and covers exactly that many cells. Mochi Rect keeps those rules but lets you draw the rectangles by dragging instead of penciling lines, and tints each box so you can see at a glance whether it is right.
Why does each rectangle need exactly one numbered chip?
That is the heart of Shikaku: every numbered candy chip owns one rectangle and no rectangle may share or skip a chip. A box catching two chips, or none, can never be correct — it shows red. The level finishes only when the count of your rectangles equals the count of chips and each holds a single one.
What does the number on a chip mean?
It is the area its rectangle must cover, in cells. A chip showing 6 needs a box of exactly six cells — drawn as 1x6, 2x3, 3x2, or 6x1 — and the area you have dragged is printed big in the middle of the box while you drag. Match that running count to the chip and the box snaps to the world's candy glow.
My box covers one chip but stays amber — what is wrong?
Amber means the right chip is inside but the area is off: too few or too many cells. Nudge an edge one cell at a time, watching the running area number, until it equals the chip and the box flips from amber to the glowing world color.
What happens when I draw a box over rectangles I already made?
Committing a new box automatically erases every box it overlaps, so you never have to clear an old shape first — just redraw over a wrong region. To pull a single box off without replacing it, tap it; to wipe the whole board, press R or Backspace or use Clear all in settings.
Why can't I draw a one-cell box for a chip showing 1?
A single-cell press with no drag is read as a tap (which lifts a box off), so a 1x1 box can't be committed. Mochi Rect is built around this: every generated and hand-tuned board is checked to contain only rectangles of two cells or more, so a lone 1 clue never appears and a solution can always be drawn.
How many puzzles are there?
Twenty hand-tuned levels span five candy worlds — Berry, Citrus, Mint, Ocean, and Galaxy — ramping from a roomy 5x5 grid to a dense 10x10. Clear all twenty to unlock Endless mode, which builds fresh boards forever, growing toward 13x13 and staying densely cut so the puzzles keep getting tougher instead of repeating.
If you like Mochi Rect
About the developer
Anime Mochi is a small independent studio making free, original browser games by hand in HTML5, JavaScript, and Canvas.
