How to play Color Sort
Each glass tube holds up to 4 segments of colored liquid. Tap a tube to lift it, then tap another tube to pour. You can only pour onto the same color or into an empty tube, and the game pours as many top segments of that color as fit. The level is done when every tube is either empty or filled with a single color.
A pour that breaks the rules makes the tube shake and nothing moves, so feel free to experiment. Tap the lifted tube again or press Esc to put it back down.
How Color Sort levels get harder
Level 1 starts with 3 colors and 5 tubes. Every 2 levels one more color joins, up to 12 colors and 14 tubes from level 18 on. Normally there are 2 spare tubes, but from level 5 every fifth level is a tight one: only 1 spare tube and part-filled tubes to begin with.
Levels are built from the level number, so level 23 is the same puzzle for everyone, and every level is checked to be solvable before you see it. There is no last level: the counter keeps going and your highest level reached is saved as your best score.
Color Sort stars, par and undo
Every level shows a par, the number of pours the game expects for that puzzle. Finish within about 1.3 times par for 3 stars, within 2 times par for 2 stars, and any finish earns 1 star. Your best star count per level is saved on this device, and the game reopens on the level you reached last.
Undo is free and unlimited. It takes back the last pour and the move counter too, but the undo counter on the top bar remembers how many times you used it, so a 3-star run with 20 undos is still a bit of a cheat.
Color Sort tips for fewer moves
Do not fill an empty tube right away. Empty tubes are your working space: use them to free a color that is stuck under others, then pour it back onto its matching tube. Before each pour, check what color sits underneath the top layer so your pour opens something up.
Pouring a whole run at once counts as one move, so wait until two or three segments of the same color are on top before moving them. The game works the same on a phone with taps and on a computer with the mouse or the number keys, no download needed.