Animal Connection

Three modes and thirty stages give Animal Connection more structure than most link boards. RavalMatic built it in 2017 around a forest setting with cartoon animals on the cards, and the modes change the framing rather than the core rule: pairs and routes work the same way in each of them. The rules behind it are laid out in solitaire against connect.

That rule is simple to state. Two identical animals clear when a line between them turns no more than twice. Thirty stages is enough for the layouts to develop properly, and by the later ones the grid is packed tightly enough that most legal routes have to leave the board and come back around the outside. For a board of the same kind, see Kris Mahjong.

A time limit sits on each stage, so the pattern detection the game is built around has to happen at speed rather than at leisure. The animal set is drawn in flat bright colour, which reads well, but the grid gets crowded, and full screen is the difference between seeing a route and guessing at one. Mouse and touchscreen controls are both supported. The Animals Connect 3 grid replaces the tile art and leaves the path rule alone.

1. Pick one of the three modes and start a stage.
2. Find two cards showing the same animal.
3. Check that the route between them turns twice at most, counting paths that run outside the grid.
4. Select both cards to clear the pair, and empty the stage before its clock stops.

• Use the outside — a route around the edge of the grid costs one turn and reaches almost anywhere.
• Thin the border first — the outside route only exists while the perimeter is clear.
• Try each mode early — with three of them, finding the one that suits you is worth doing before stage twenty.
• Match on silhouette — the cartoon animals share a palette, and the outline is the quicker read.
• Full screen for the late stages — the last of the thirty pack the grid densely enough that small cards blur.