lf52 — ARC-AGI-3 game guide

Level 1

• Click a peg to pick it. A dark gray ring goes around it, and a small gray ring appears on every square it can hop to, pulsing between a ring and a dot. Clicking a different peg switches to that one.
• A hop goes straight up, down, left or right, never diagonally. It needs a peg (or, from level 4, a purple block) in the very next square and an empty floor tile just past it.
• Click one of the gray landing rings to make the hop.
• Click a peg that has no legal hop and it gives a quick sideways wiggle. Nothing gets picked.
• Clicking anything that isn't a peg or a landing ring (empty floor, background, a purple block, a cart) just drops the current pick. Level 1 is the exception, see the hint below. The click still costs a move.
• The arrow keys move the rail carts. Level 1 has no carts, so there an arrow press does nothing except spend a move.
• Undo takes back your last action: a hop, a pick, a cart move, even a wasted click. It also refunds the move that action cost. You can undo again and again, one action at a time.
• RESET restarts the current level and sets both the move count and the top-row meter back to zero.
• While that button is showing, a click anywhere in the bottom-left corner (not just on the icon) plays a black speckle fade and puts the level back to its start. Your move count goes back to zero, but the top-row meter keeps counting.
• A hop removes the peg it jumps over when both pegs are the same color. Get the board down to one peg and the level is won: the pegs left do a little bounce and the next level loads.
• Pegs are green circles. The floor is light gray tiles with white rims on a white board. A peg can only land on a floor tile, never on the light blue background.
• There are no enemies, hazards or lives. Running out of moves is the only way to lose.
• Every click and every arrow press costs one move, even one that does nothing. Level 1 gives you 64 moves, levels 2-5 give 320 and levels 6-10 give 640. Use them all up and the game is over. The win check runs first, so a winning hop on your very last move still counts.
• When you hop, the peg slides over and briefly swells, a sideways hop arcs up a few pixels on the way, and the peg you jumped shrinks away to nothing.
• The top row of the screen is an action meter, not the move limit. Each action, undo included, adds one pixel from the left, and the row gets one shade darker every 64 actions (white, then light gray, gray, dark gray, darker gray). Undo doesn't take pixels back, so the meter can show more than you have really spent. It clears on RESET or a new level.
• Level 1 only: clicking empty space before your first hop blinks a blue circle over the peg to start with, or over its landing square once you have picked that peg. The hint click costs a move like any other.
• On levels 1, 2, 3 and 6 the game knows some dead-end hops. Land on one of those squares and, after a short pause, every peg turns gray and shakes, then a purple pin-shaped button with a white centre rises into the bottom-left corner. On level 1, clicking empty space after that blinks the blue circle over the button. Not every losing hop is caught, and levels 4, 5 and 7-10 have no such squares.

Boss, 2026-09-12: Level 1. It should take no more than 10 actions. He believes it can be done in 3.

Level 2

• Black track lines appear, with a rail cart on them: an orange square with a yellow rim. Each arrow press moves the cart one square that way if there is track there. It won't leave the track or move into another cart. Moving a cart also drops your current pick.
• An empty cart counts as a landing square, so a peg can hop onto it, and whatever sits on a cart rides along when it moves. That is how pegs get from one group of tiles to another. A cart that already has something on it can't be landed on.

Boss, 2026-09-12: A car on the board. You move the car with the direction keys. The AI runs never realize that, so they never solve level 2.

Level 3

• Several carts on one level. An arrow press moves every cart that has track ahead of it, all at the same time.
• From level 3 most boards are bigger than the screen, and the view slides along. It pans when a cart carries a green peg (levels 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9, and the upper carts on level 4; a red or blue passenger doesn't move the view), and when a peg lands on certain squares (levels 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9).

Boss, 2026-09-12: Level 3. Everything is side-scrolling: you have to go way off the original screen. It is like bp35, except bp35 scrolls up and down and this one scrolls sideways.

Level 4

• Purple blocks: purple squares with a light pink and white centre. A peg can hop over one, but the block never comes off, can't be picked, and can't be landed on.

Level 5

• Some purple blocks sit on carts and travel with them, so the thing you hop over can be moved into place.

Level 6

• Because the red peg can't be removed, levels 6 and 7 are won with two pegs left: the red one and one other. Level 7 starts with only two green pegs and the red one, so one capture clears it.
• A red peg (a red circle), one each on levels 6 and 7. Green pegs can hop over it and it can hop over green pegs, but neither removes the other, so the red peg never comes off.
• When a green peg and the red peg hop over each other, a copy of the jumping peg is drawn on top so you can see it pass over.

Level 7

Level 8

• Blue pegs don't count toward the goal. Levels 8-10 are won when one green peg is left, however many blue pegs are still on the board.
• Blue pegs (blue circles). They can be picked, can hop, and can be hopped over like any peg, but a blue peg never comes off and never removes anything it jumps.

Level 9

Level 10

• Level 10's board runs off the bottom of the screen and the view never moves. A column of five carts carrying blue pegs starts mostly below the edge and comes into view as you push the carts up.