Animal Connect

Pairs of animals joined across a flat field, with a two-turn line and a clock you can hear ticking.

Animal Connect, dating from 2017, lays out a field of creature tiles and asks for identical pairs. The pace is deliberately unhurried compared with the frantic end of the genre, but there is still a clock, and the field has to be empty before it stops.

The connection rule is the strict two-turn version. A line drawn between the pair may bend at a right angle twice, and it must not cross any tile still standing. That second clause is the one players underrate: a route can have the correct number of bends and still fail because a single creature sits in the way, which is why the board is usually opened from the outside in. Two turns and nothing in the way is also the rule in Kris Mahjong.

A hint is available for stalled searches and a shuffle for a field with no legal link left, and both are more useful late than early, when the remaining animals are few and stubbornly placed. Nothing about the layout hides a tile from you, so a failed level is almost always a sequencing mistake rather than bad luck. The full shelf is the Connect section.

Full screen suits this one because the creatures are drawn with fine markings, and separating two similar birds is faster on a large field than a small one. Mouse and touch both select a tile. The corridor habit carries straight over to the Woodventure grid.

Controls

Mouse, or a tap on a touchscreen.

How to Play

Look over the field and find two identical animal tiles.
Trace the line between them, allowing at most two right-angle bends.
Make sure the line does not cross any creature still in play.
Select the pair to clear it and open new routes for the rest.
Empty the field before the timer runs out.

Tips & Tricks

Open from the outside — edge creatures have the shortest legal lines, and taking them widens the routes inward.
Count the bends — a route needing three turns is not a move, however close the two animals look.
Watch for blockers — a single tile sitting on the line kills a pair that otherwise satisfies the rule.
Save the aids for the endgame — the last handful of creatures is where a hint or a shuffle actually changes the outcome.
Enlarge the field — full screen makes the finer animal markings distinguishable and cuts the time spent double-checking a pair.