How to Play Arrows – Rules, Order of Moves & Strategy

What is the Arrows Game?

Arrows is a single-player logic puzzle about the order you do things in. It belongs to the family of arrow escape puzzles, also sold as arrow out or arrow blocking puzzles, which have become a fixture on mobile; this one plays free in a browser on a PC or a phone. The board is packed with arrows, each one a bent path of squares with an arrowhead on the end. Tapping an arrow slides it forward off the board in the direction the head points, with the body trailing behind it. The catch is that an arrow can only leave if the whole path in front of it is empty, and at the start of a puzzle almost every arrow is standing in the way of some other one.

Nothing on the board moves by itself. There is no gravity, no shuffling, no pieces falling into gaps. The only thing that ever changes the board is you removing an arrow, and when you do, the squares it occupied are cleared permanently. So the puzzle is a chain of dependencies: this arrow cannot go until that one has, and that one is waiting on a third. Find a thread you can pull and the whole board comes apart.

Objective of Arrows

Remove every arrow from the board.

That is all of it. There is no score to maximise, no time to beat, and no secondary objective. A puzzle is won when the grid is empty and lost only if you run out of hearts, which restarts the same puzzle rather than taking anything away.

Complete Rules for Arrows

The Anatomy of an Arrow

1. An arrow is a path, not a tile. It occupies a connected run of board squares, never fewer than two, and it usually bends. The shortest is a straight two-square stub; the longest winds across twenty-four squares.
2. The arrowhead is on the last square. It points along the direction of the arrow’s final segment, which is one of the four compass directions. That direction is the only thing about the arrow that determines where it can go.
3. The body is everything behind the head. It never affects the arrow’s own move. It matters because it takes up squares, which is what stands in other arrows’ way.
4. Arrows never overlap. Every square holds at most one arrow, and the shape of the board itself may be a rectangle, an ellipse, a rounded slab, a diamond, a cross or a heart.

The Only Rule That Matters

An arrow can leave if and only if every square from its arrowhead to the edge of the board, in a straight line, is empty.

• Trace the ray. Start at the arrowhead and travel in the direction it points, square by square, until you go off the board. That line is the arrow’s exit path.
• Any occupant blocks it. If even one square on that line holds part of another arrow, the move is illegal. It does not matter whether that other arrow is long or short, or which way it faces, only that it is there.
• A legal tap removes the arrow entirely. The head drives out along its path and the body follows it around its own bends, like carriages behind an engine, until the whole arrow is off the board.
• A blocked tap does nothing. The arrow lurches forward and springs back, the exit path glows red as far as the first obstruction, and the arrows in the way flash. Then it costs you one heart. The board is exactly as it was.

Hearts and Restarting

• Three hearts per puzzle. Only blocked taps cost them. Thinking is free, and so is taking as long as you like.
• Out of hearts restarts the puzzle. You get three fresh hearts and the same layout from the beginning. Your position in the journey is untouched; you do not go backwards.
• Restart is always available. You can take a clean run at a board at any time, for nothing.
• No timer, no score, no move counter. Nothing is measuring you but the hearts, and hearts only respond to illegal moves.

The Journey

• Puzzles are played in order. Puzzle 1 onwards, one after another. There is no puzzle select and no map.
• Every puzzle is labelled. Normal, Hard, Super Hard or Nightmare appears under the number, along with the arrow count, before you start.
• Boards grow. Grids run from 4x4 up to 14x20, with arrow counts from six to seventy-five.
• Progress saves after every tap. A board you are in the middle of comes back exactly as you left it.
• Perfect clears. Finishing a puzzle without losing a heart is recorded as a perfect clear and pays bonus XP toward your overall level.

Why Every Arrows Puzzle Can Be Solved

This is worth understanding, because it changes how you play when you get stuck.

Puzzles are not generated by scattering arrows and hoping. Each board is built backwards, starting from an empty grid. An arrow is placed so that it could have just left, then another behind it, then another, each one added in a position it could legally have departed from. When the board is full, the generator has, as a by-product, produced the exact order the arrows can be removed in. That order is a guaranteed solution, and it exists before the puzzle is ever shown to you. Every puzzle is then verified again when it loads.

Two consequences matter at the table:

• There is always a legal move. Right down to the final arrow, at least one arrow on the board is free. If you cannot find it, it is hiding, not absent.
• You can never be trapped by an earlier choice. Because nothing moves on its own, “this arrow blocks that one” is a permanent fact about the puzzle, not something your moves can create. Removing arrows only ever clears squares, so it only ever unblocks. A wrong order can waste time; it cannot ruin a board.

That second point is the real freedom in Arrows. In most puzzle games a bad early move can leave you in a dead position. Here, the worst a suboptimal move can do is fail to help.

Strategy: Finding the Order

The Two Questions

Every decision in Arrows comes down to two questions asked in order:

1. Which arrows are free right now? Trace the ray from each arrowhead to the edge. The ones with a clear line are your legal moves.
2. Which of those frees the most? Removing an arrow clears every square its body occupied. The arrow whose removal opens the most paths for others is the best move, even if it looks unimportant.

Most players get the first question right and skip the second. Answering both is what turns a slow board into a cascade.

Opening a Board

• Start at the edges. An arrowhead sitting near an edge and pointing at it has the shortest possible exit path and the fewest opportunities to be blocked. Edge-facing arrows are almost always the way in.
• Scan by direction, not by position. Rather than looking at arrows one at a time, take all the arrows pointing right and check which have clear lines to the right edge, then all the ones pointing up, and so on. Reading a whole direction at once is far faster than examining shapes individually.
• Ignore the crowd in the middle. On a dense Normal board the centre is a mess and mostly cannot move yet. It will open up on its own once the edges start clearing.

Working Backwards When Stuck

When nothing obvious is free, reverse the question. Instead of “what can I move?”, ask:

1. Pick an arrow that is clearly in the way of a lot of things.
2. Trace its exit path and find the first arrow blocking it.
3. Trace that arrow’s exit path and find what blocks it.
4. Keep going. The chain always terminates at an arrow that is free, because a full solution order exists.

This is the single most useful habit in the game, and it becomes essential on Nightmare boards where only one or two arrows are free at the start.

Long Arrows Are Two Problems

A long arrow is awkward twice over, and both need planning for:

• It needs a long clear path to leave, so it tends to be blocked for most of the puzzle.
• Its body occupies a lot of squares, so while it waits it is blocking a great deal of other traffic.

On Super Hard and Nightmare boards the long arrows are effectively the structure of the puzzle. Work out what it will take to release them early, because the board will not really open up until they are gone.

Do Not Pay to Find Out

Nearly all heart loss comes from tapping an arrow to discover whether it is blocked. Do not. The exit path is fully visible, every square along it is right there on the board, and tracing it with your eye costs nothing. Taking two seconds to check is always cheaper than a heart.

Playing the Four Tiers

Note the pattern: fewer arrows means harder, not easier. A board that looks sparse is a warning.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Tapping to test. The most expensive habit in the game, and completely avoidable. The answer is always visible before you commit.
2. Reading the body instead of the head. An arrow’s shape is irrelevant to its own move. Only the straight line out of the arrowhead decides anything.
3. Taking free arrows in whatever order you spot them. All legal moves are safe, but they are not equally useful. Prefer the one that unblocks the most.
4. Forgetting the board’s shape. On an ellipse, a diamond or a heart, the edge is not where it would be on a rectangle. An arrow can reach open air much sooner than you expect, or much later.
5. Grinding on a Nightmare with one heart left. Restart is free and loses nothing. A second run with what you now know is usually quicker.
6. Thinking a bad move can ruin the board. It cannot. Removing arrows only ever opens the board up. The worst case is a wasted move, never a dead position.

Ready to Play?

You know the rule, you know that a solution is always there, and you know to trace the line before you tap. That is genuinely everything. The first puzzles are small and forgiving, and they teach the rest as you go. Play Arrows free →