Mochi Rect

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

1. Read the candy chips: each number tells you how many cells the rectangle around that chip must cover.
2. Press on a cell and drag to another cell; the preview box spans the two and shows its running area as a big number.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. When the board is perfectly tiled it completes on its own, awards three stars, and offers Next for the following puzzle.

Controls

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.
• A hand-illustrated pastel countryside backdrop - cherry-blossom trees, a candy village, a torii gate and a snow-capped mountain - with the puzzle on a soft glass tray over it.
• 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.
• Looping background music plus per-box audio that chimes brighter the larger the rectangle, 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.

Carving Order Out Of A Lattice

What sells Mochi Rect is the moment a scattered set of numbered candy chips stops looking like noise. You stare at a faint lattice dusted with chips, and one clue suddenly forces its own shape, which boxes in its neighbor, which pins the chip two cells over. A corner 4 has almost nowhere to stretch, so it goes down first; a lone 6 has to be one-by-six, two-by-three, three-by-two, or six-by-one, and only one of those actually fits the gap. The reward is watching the grid resolve into a clean mosaic, each box snapping to its world color the instant its area equals its number.

The drawing carries real feedback. You press a starting cell and drag to a far one, and the rectangle spans everything between, snapped to whole cells. A dashed preview marches around it with a big running area printed dead center, and that number is the whole tell: green-glow when the box wraps one chip whose count matches, amber when one chip sits inside but the size is off, red when it catches zero chips or two. Committed boxes keep a small area count tucked in a corner. The pitch of each commit chime climbs with box size, and a five-note arpeggio caps the win over a flash, a shake, and sparkles bursting from every rectangle.

The loop is forgiving without going soft. No timer, no lives, and dragging a fresh box simply erases whatever it overlaps, so untangling a bad region costs nothing; a single tap lifts any committed box back off, and R or Backspace wipes the board clean. A quiet safety net runs underneath: leave the board idle for three seconds and the game outlines one correct rectangle, always the smallest one you have not yet placed, the gentlest possible nudge. The bottom-right bulb hands you that same hint on demand. It is a puzzle built to keep you thinking rather than rage-quitting.

The curve is honest. Twenty hand-tuned levels climb through five candy worlds, Berry to Galaxy, from roomy five-by-five boards with big breathing rectangles up to dense ten-by-ten constellations where cuts crowd together and several chips fight for one gap. Each board is built backward from a real partition and validated for full coverage, matching areas, and one chip per box, with lone single-cell clues deliberately barred since a press with no drag reads as a tap. So a clean answer always exists and you never hit a dead end. Clear the set and Endless keeps generating dense boards that grow toward thirteen-by-thirteen.