Mochi Zip

About Mochi Zip

Mochi Zip is a one-line path puzzle. The board is a grid of rounded candy tiles, and a few of them carry numbered chips - 1, 2, 3, and so on. You tap the chip marked 1 and then drag a single glowing trail (the "zip") from one tile to the next, never lifting it, until you have done two things at once: covered every playable tile exactly once, and passed through the numbered chips in climbing order. Touch chip 2 before chip 1, or leave a single tile empty at the end, and the puzzle is not finished yet. It is the kind of quiet logic puzzle you can chew on while the trail hums a little higher in pitch with every cell you add.

There is no clock and no fail state, so nothing punishes you for thinking. If a turn was wrong, just drag the trail back the way it came - each step you retrace pops off the head one cell at a time, with a soft low pip, so you can experiment freely. Lift your finger and the half-drawn path stays put, ready to pick up again from the bright pulsing head; if you want a clean slate, the Restart option lives in the settings (gear) menu. The only counter on screen during play is a small tally of how many cells your line has covered out of the total it needs to fill.

The 20 hand-built levels are split into five candy worlds of four levels each: Berry (pink), Citrus (amber), Mint (green), Ocean (blue), and Galaxy (purple). Berry eases you in with full grids as small as 4x4 and just two chips, so the whole puzzle is simply "fill the board from 1 to 2." Citrus adds more numbered stops, then from Mint onward sleepy "cushion" tiles (drawn with little closed eyes) appear - these are walls you route around, so the board stops being a plain rectangle and becomes a shape. Ocean and Galaxy pile on chips, cushions, and size, topping out at an 8x7 grid with six numbers to hit in order.

Every board is built backwards from a real solution: the game lays down a complete winning path first and then drops the chips and cushions onto it, so a Mochi Zip puzzle is never a dead end or a lucky guess - there is always at least one way through. Clear all 20 levels and Endless mode opens up, generating brand-new boards that start at the difficulty of that final Galaxy puzzle and keep climbing - bigger grids, more chips, more cushions - for as long as you keep solving. Your unlocked levels and stars are kept in your own browser, so your progress is there when you come back.

How to play Mochi Zip

1. Look across the board for the candy chip with a 1 on it, and tap it - the zip starts glowing there.
2. Without lifting your finger, drag to an adjacent tile (up, down, left, or right) to grow the line one cell at a time.
3. Steer the line so it reaches chip 2 next, then 3, and on up to the highest number, always in order.
4. Sweep through every plain tile exactly once on the way; the cushions with closed eyes aren't part of the puzzle, so route around them.
5. Made a wrong turn? Drag the head back along its own trail to retract cells, then try a different route.
6. When the last tile is filled and the final chip is reached in sequence, the level pops with three stars - tap Next for the following puzzle.

Controls

Tips & strategy

• Find the forced moves first. A tile pinned in a corner or boxed against the cushions usually has only one way in and one way out, so commit the line through it early before its exits get used up.
• The trail must end on the highest-numbered chip, so plan the finish as carefully as the start - work out which corner of the board the line should die in so no tile is left over.
• Never strand a lonely tile. If your line walls off a single empty cell with no neighbour to enter it from, the cover can't complete - keep your coverage solid and gap-free as you sweep across.
• When two chips sit far apart, mop up the tiles between them as you travel rather than dashing straight over; a straight rush usually leaves a clump of cells you can no longer reach.
• Treat the cushion tiles as the outline of a room. From Mint onward the board is a shape, and hugging that shape's edge often reveals the single clean route around it.
• Watch the cells-covered tally in the corner - if it stops climbing toward the total, your current path can't finish, so retract and rethink before you reach a dead end.
• Retracting is free and silent of penalty, so use it like an eraser: back up a few cells, take a different turn, and keep the part of the path you liked.

Game features

• A single-rule path puzzle: draw one unbroken line that fills every cell and threads the numbered chips 1, 2, 3 in order.
• 20 hand-built levels across five colour-themed worlds - Berry, Citrus, Mint, Ocean and Galaxy, four levels each.
• A difficulty curve that grows from 4x4 grids with two chips up to an 8x7 board with six chips to hit in sequence.
• Sleepy 'cushion' wall tiles from the Mint world on, turning rectangles into puzzle-shaped rooms you route around.
• Every board is generated from a guaranteed solution, so no Mochi Zip puzzle is ever a dead end or unsolvable.
• Endless mode after level 20 that starts at the final level's difficulty and keeps ramping up bigger, busier boards.
• Free, undo-anytime, no-timer, no-fail play with a kept-on-pause partial path so you can step away mid-puzzle.
• A glowing two-pass neon trail with a pulsing head, chips that light up as you reach them, and step sounds that pitch up as the line grows.
• Saved progress and three-star clears in your browser, plus looping background music, a mute toggle and a tap-to-pick level map.

One Unbroken Line, Pitched As It Grows

The line is the whole personality of Mochi Zip, and it is doing more than glowing. The trail renders in two passes, a wide additive haze laid under a bright core, with a dashed specular highlight that slides along its length so the path reads as something flowing rather than painted. The head is a white knob that swells and pulses, and even a single tapped cell gets its own node dot so a one-square start is still visible. Every extension fires a triangle-wave tick that climbs in pitch as the line lengthens; back the head onto the previous cell and it pops off with a lower sine pip. You hear your own route taking shape.

The puzzle underneath is a true Hamiltonian path, and the build proves it can always be solved. A randomized search lays a full-grid path first, then trims cells off both ends to carve the walls, so the survivor is the solution by construction and the chips drop onto it in order. The standout is the idle helper. Sit still for five seconds and a soft mochi hand fades in over one cell: it checks whether your drawn line is still a prefix of the real path and points at the next cell to extend into, or, if you have diverged, at the cell behind the head to back up toward. Top-row targets get pointed at from below so the hand never spills into the badge.

The worlds are a clean difficulty dial rather than reskins. Berry runs full four-by-four grids with only a 1 and a 2, so the task is simply filling the board end to end. Citrus stacks on more numbered chips, then Mint introduces the sleepy cushion tiles, drawn with little closed eyes, which the line cannot enter, turning the rectangle into an irregular room you thread around. Ocean and Galaxy keep adding chips, cushions and size until you are routing one line across an eight-by-seven board through six numbers, planning which corner the trail is allowed to finish in.

There is no timer, no fail state, no score, only a small cells-covered tally that tells you when a route has quietly stranded a tile it can no longer reach. A chip lights with a halo the instant the line reaches it in proper sequence, which is the only feedback that you are on track. Because retracting is free and the half-drawn line is kept the moment you lift off, the natural rhythm is to commit a stretch, eye the tally, peel back what dead-ends, and keep the part that works. Clear all twenty curated levels and Endless generates fresh boards seeded from Galaxy's hardness and climbing past it.