vc33 — ARC-AGI-3 game guide

Level 1

• Click is the only action. Clicking a blue pump or an orange gate does something. Clicking anything else, including a gray gate or a pump that can't move liquid right now, does nothing but still uses a click.
• You win when every rider is level with a short stripe of its own color painted on a black wall next to its tank. The check runs after every click.
• The white areas are liquid in tanks divided by black walls. The liquid settles toward one side of the screen, and that side changes by level: right on levels 1 and 5, left on 2 and 6, down on 3 and 4, up on 7. The pumps always sit on the side the liquid settles toward, and the surface is the far face of the liquid.
• Blue squares are pumps. They come in pairs at the foot of a black wall, one on each side of it. Clicking one moves liquid through that wall into the tank on the pump's own side: that tank's surface moves out one step and the tank across the wall drops one step. A step is 2 pixels on levels 1-3 and 7, and 3 pixels on levels 4-6.
• A pump does nothing if the tank it would drain is empty, or if the tank it would fill already reaches the end of the shorter black wall beside it.
• Riders are small shapes with a darker gray cap and a colored base (yellow, green or purple), sitting on a liquid surface. You can't click them. They move only when the surface under them moves, and they go with it.
• The strip along the top edge is the click budget: light pink for clicks left, darker gray for clicks used. Every click costs one. The budgets are 50, 50, 75, 50, 200, 50 and 200 for levels 1 to 7. The click that uses the last one loses, unless that same click wins the level.
• RESET restarts the current level with a full budget. There is no undo; the other pump of a pair moves the liquid back, and that costs a click too.

Level 2

• Three tanks in a row. The middle tank has a wall on each side, so it can be filled or drained through either wall.

Level 3

• Three riders at once (yellow, green and purple). Each one needs a stripe of its own color, and all three have to be level at the same time.

Level 4

• Clicking an orange gate opens it: the gate slides back out of the way, a rider on either side slides across to the middle of the tank on the other side, and the gate slides shut. If both sides have a rider, they swap. The whole crossing plays out as one click. Clicking a gray gate does nothing.
• Light gray gates set into the black walls. A gate is ready when the liquid on both sides of it is exactly level with its end nearest the liquid; it then turns orange and white brackets appear on both sides of it. When it stops being level, it goes back to light gray.

Level 5

Boss, 2026-09-17: Level 5 of 7 is one of the levels turned 90 degrees counterclockwise since the preview, so the tanks run sideways. The yellow piece has to get through a gate and up to where it wants to be, and the gates only show up once you make them appear. Lost the level once. On the next try, put the green piece down first, then went back to work on the yellow piece. That is the order the level wants: green has to go down first and yellow gets finished later. Devious.

Level 6

• Black bars in a tank's path. A tank can't be pumped past the bar, and if a rider sits on that tank, it stops early enough to leave the rider room.

Boss, 2026-09-17: Level 6 needs the volume indicators, which show how much liquid is in each part, read pixel-perfect. Insane, and very confusing. He took a screenshot out of pure frustration.

Level 7