Flow Free

About Flow Free

Flow Free came out on iPhone in 2012 from Big Duck Games, and it is on Android too. Each board is a square grid with pairs of coloured dots. You drag from one dot to its partner to lay a pipe, and a puzzle is solved only when every pair is joined and every cell of the board is covered. Pipes break if you draw one across another, so the work is in finding routes that share the board without crossing.

The daily part is the Daily Puzzles pack, which the app describes as new puzzles every day. Unlike the fixed packs, it changes daily: according to the Flow Free fan wiki it holds between 2 and 12 levels, on boards from 5x5 up to 13x13, and the difficulty varies by day rather than rising with your streak. The pack tracks your current streak, your longest streak and the total days played, and missing a day takes one day off the current streak instead of wiping it. Game Center achievements mark 3, 7 and 30 day streaks and 100 and 365 days played.

Each level is scored by accuracy: finishing in one go, without redrawing a pipe, earns a star, while a messier solve earns a check mark. Outside the dailies there are Free Play packs in ten board sizes, bridge levels and a Time Trial mode with 20 scored variants. The same daily pack also appears in the spin-off apps Flow Free: Bridges, Hexes, Warps and Shapes.

Flow Free is free with ads, and you can buy extra level packs and hints. Big Duck Games also offers Flow Free+ on Apple Arcade, which also lists daily puzzles. It suits players who like short spatial puzzles they can solve in a few minutes and a streak counter that forgives an occasional missed day.

How to play Flow Free

1. Open Flow Free and select Daily Puzzles from the pack list.
2. Pick the first of today's boards.
3. Drag from a coloured dot to the dot of the same colour to draw a pipe between them.
4. Join every pair without crossing pipes and make sure every cell of the board is filled.
5. Work through the rest of today's boards to complete the day and extend your streak.

Screenshots

Tips

• Start with pairs whose dots sit on the edge or in a corner; their routes have the fewest options.
• Run long pipes along the walls of the board so the middle stays open for the other colours.
• If a pair can only take one short route, draw it first; it often fixes the routes around it.
• Plan the whole route before you lift your finger if you want a star for a perfect solve.
• Save hints for the larger boards later in the pack.
• A missed day only takes one day off your streak, so come back the next day rather than giving up on it.

Questions