How to play Star Battle

The goal

Playing

• Tap a cell to put a dot in it, meaning “no star here”. Tap again for a star, and once more to clear it.
• Hold a cell to place a star straight away, or to remove one.
• Drag across cells to dot them all in one go. Starting a drag on a dot wipes dots instead.
• In Settings you can make a tap place a star first, and turn on auto-dots, which dots the cells around each star you place.

Checking your work

• The marks above each column and beside each row turn green when that line has its stars, and red when it has too many.
• A region fades once it has its stars.
• Stars that touch, or that crowd a row, column or region, turn red.
• Undo takes back your last change. A drag counts as one change.

Tips

• Start with small regions: a region two cells wide can only hold its star in a few places.
• If a region sits entirely inside one row, that row’s star must be in that region, so dot the rest of the row.
• Every star rules out the eight cells around it.

Difficulty

• Easy: a 6×6 grid with one star per row, column and region.
• Normal: an 8×8 grid with one star each.
• Hard: a 10×10 grid with two stars each.
• Every puzzle is new and has exactly one solution. Your best times are kept for each difficulty.

Keyboard

• Arrow keys move, Space or Enter taps, S places a star, X or . places a dot, Backspace clears, and Ctrl or ⌘+Z undoes.

Questions

Strategy guides