Don't Touch the Dots

The pitch

Don't Touch the Dots is a challenging arcade maze game about precise moves and good timing. Guide a little blue square through 30 levels full of moving red dots, collect every coin and reach the purple finish zone. Purple zones are safe spots and checkpoints: touch a dot and you go back to the last one you reached, and the coins you picked up after it return to the field. Watch the patterns, wait for a gap and slip through while a death counter tracks every death. Earn gems for clearing new levels, for daily gifts and daily tasks, and spend them on new skins and trails for your square.

Controls & how it runs

Goal: collect all the coins on the level, then reach the purple finish zone. Avoid the moving red dots. Desktop: move the square with the arrow keys or WASD. Press P or click the pause button to pause. Use the mouse for menus and buttons. Mobile: turn your phone sideways. Touch the left side of the screen and drag to move the square with the on-screen joystick. Tap the pause button to pause. Rules: the red dots move in fixed patterns. Touching one adds a death and sends you back to the last purple zone you reached, and the coins you collected after it return to the field. While the square is fully inside a purple zone, the dots cannot hurt it. The first level shows a short tip on how to move. Earn gems for clearing a level for the first time, for the daily gift and for daily tasks, and spend them on skins and trails in the shop.

Getting a run going takes exactly one press: Press start, up top, and the game boots inside this page — nothing downloads in the background and no form wants your details before the first jump. The cabinet is drawn for a landscape (wide) screen and listens to mouse, keyboard or touch, whichever the game prefers. This cabinet runs wide: landscape screens flatter it, so tip a phone on its side or hand it a tablet or desktop and let it stretch out. Given a fullscreen button, use it — scores look better at full size, that's just science.

Pro tips for puzzle cabinets

• Count what's missing, not what's there. In matching and logic boards the empty spaces and absent pieces usually draw the shape of the solution for you.
• Solve the corner first. Constrained edges and locked pieces have the fewest options, which makes them the honest starting point of almost every board here.
• If you're stuck, change the order, not the plan. Many boards on this row are the same moves played in a different sequence — the lock was the order all along.

Don't Touch the Dots — quick-fire questions

Does Don't Touch the Dots cost anything to play?

Not a token. The cabinet is free from the first run to the five-hundredth — no wallet, no sign-up, no toll booth hiding three levels in. The adverts around the page are what keep the floor's lights on.

What sort of game is Don't Touch the Dots?

It stands on our Puzzle row — that's the family it plays most like. The pitch above is the publisher's own rundown of what it throws at you and what it hands back.

Can I play Don't Touch the Dots on my phone?

Happily, yes. It runs inside the browser on phones and tablets the same way it does on a computer. This cabinet runs wide: landscape screens flatter it, so tip a phone on its side or hand it a tablet or desktop and let it stretch out.

Do I need to install anything first?

Nothing whatsoever. Don't Touch the Dots is an HTML5 game: hit the start button and it boots on this page, and shutting the tab sweeps the cabinet clean behind you.

Before you wander off

Personal best banked, or still chasing it? Either way the full Puzzle row is powered on and waiting — Boards, bubbles and blocked exits: 139 puzzle cabinets for players who like their pressure quiet and their solutions sudden. Think first, tap second, gloat third.