Restoration Box — Rules & Strategy

A box-pushing puzzle where you are not pushing crates onto marked squares. You push the shards of a shattered statue so that their joints interlock into one piece, and then get that finished statue onto its pedestal.

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The one-line version

When two joints meet, the shards fuse on the spot, permanently. And a fused block is rigid: it moves only when every destination cell ahead of it is clear. So a 1×2 lying flat can never enter a one-wide vertical shaft — not "with difficulty", never. Which makes the only real question in this game not "how do I fuse these" but "where do I fuse these". Assembling the statue perfectly in a place it can't leave is the standard way to lose, and it is measurable: a greedy bot that fuses the nearest pair as soon as it can fails on all six core levels.

Core rules

1. The board. Grids run from 7×7 to 10×9 and are made of walls, floor, pedestal cells (the carved ones), the player, and the shards. Every shard starts as a single 1×1 cell.
2. Moving and pushing. You move in four directions and can push a shard one cell. You cannot pull, and there is no chain pushing, so a shard can never push another shard.
3. Joints. Each shard carries zero to three joints on its edges. Joint directions are fixed by the level and nothing rotates — which edge is a joint is the puzzle.
4. Fusing. After every move the game checks automatically, and if the two faces that meet are joints of each other, the shards become one block right there. Plain edges touching does nothing at all — they just become neighbours that block each other.
5. Fusing is permanent. Nothing in the game pulls fused shards apart. Undo (Z) is the exception only because it restores a whole previous position rather than separating anything.
6. Rigid bodies. Push any cell of a fused block and the whole thing shifts one step — but only if every destination cell is floor or pedestal. One wall or one foreign shard in the way and nothing moves.
7. Winning. Every shard fused into one single block, and all of it standing on pedestal cells. Either half alone does not finish the level.
8. There is no lose condition — but the game does tell you when a position is unrecoverable, in two distinct flavours. "A shard is walled in" means some block cannot move in any direction no matter what you do and is not on the pedestal (the exact condition the solver uses to prune dead states). "Nothing left to push" means nothing can move right now.

Joint colours

Levels 1 to 3 use colourless joints (◆), so any joint locks with any joint. From level 4 joints carry a colour and a glyph, and only matching ones lock — ● (orange), ▲ (green) and ■ (blue). Level 4 introduces two of them; all three are in play from level 8. Colour is always shown together with its glyph, so you can match shapes without seeing colour at all.

What colour does is narrow your options, not widen them. Pairs that could have locked by coincidence while joints were colourless stop being possible, and the assembly order collapses toward a single answer. Level 4, "Two Grooves", exists purely to teach this: the middle shard's two joints are different colours, so its left and right neighbours cannot be swapped.

The twelve levels

There are twelve levels, all hand-built and all verified by a solver. Shard counts grow 2 · 2 · 3 · 3 · 3 · 3 · 3 · 4 · 4 · 4 · 4 · 4. Par is the solver's shortest solution, and the two-star cutoff is par plus the larger of 5 moves and 25% of par.

The curve runs 1–3 learn the rules → 4 colour arrives → 5·6·7 where to fuse → 8·9 breathe → 10·11·12 everything at once. Levels 8 and 9 having a lower par than the levels before them is not an accident but a deliberate rest: shards go from three to four and colours from two to three, and those changes are introduced in open rooms before the corridors come back.

Stars

Par or better is ★★★, par + max(5, 25% of par) is ★★, and clearing at all is ★. The allowance scales with par because a flat five moves means two different things at two different lengths — five moves is a 45% cushion on level 1 (par 11) and 11% on level 12 (par 44). The HUD shows the star you would currently earn, live, so you can watch the moment one drops away.

Only your best rating is kept, so grabbing the clear first and coming back for the shortest solution later is a perfectly reasonable plan.

Why "where you fuse" is measurable, not a claim

Six of the twelve levels — 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 — are the core levels, and they were chosen by two measurements rather than by taste.

The first is a greedy bot. It repeatedly grabs the nearest pair of shards, walks the shortest path to fuse them, and then pushes the assembly to the pedestal. On all six core levels it fails, and the failure reasons say why. On five of them (5, 6, 7, 11, 12) it succeeds in fusing everything and then reports that the assembled block cannot reach the pedestal; on level 10 it stalls earlier with no reachable fusion left. It does not lose because it can't fuse. It loses because of where it fused. On the six non-core levels the bot does succeed — but it pays: 25 moves on level 4 against par 13, 36 on level 8 against par 19, 49 on level 9 against par 27. One star each.

The second is the freedom of the fusion sites. The solver collects every shortest solution for a level and counts the distinct (shard pair, cell) combinations where a fuse actually happens. Levels 5, 6 and 7 fuse twice across two sites; level 12 fuses three times across three — meaning every optimal solution fuses in exactly the same three places. Level 11 has three fuses over four sites and level 10 has four fuses over six, which is a little slack. The closer that number sits to the number of fuses, the more the level is asking you where to assemble; a large number means it isn't asking.

Strategy

1. Measure the corridor before you fuse, not after

A block's mobility falls straight out of its shape. A flat 1×2 or 1×3 travels vertically fine but cannot enter a one-wide vertical shaft — descending would need two or three cells of the same row to be clear at once, and a one-wide shaft offers one. An upright 1×2 is the mirror image: it goes down the shaft happily but cannot pass a one-tall horizontal corridor. A 2×2 or an L passes nothing that is one cell wide, in either axis. So the order of operations is always: trace the route to the pedestal first, then fuse only into shapes that can travel it.

2. Level 5, The Shaft — every joint is horizontal, so fusing seals the exit

All three shards carry their joints east and west. Every fuse available on this board therefore produces a flat block. And the only routes from the upper room to the lower one are two one-wide vertical shafts, which a flat block is permanently too wide for. Two shafts is not a spare — both are equally impassable to a block; the second one exists so that you can move between the rooms without a shard plugging your only path. Send the three shards down separately and assemble below. The greedy bot fuses the first pair in 2 moves and the third shard 1 move later, and that is the whole game for it.

3. Level 6, The Corner — exactly one fuse is safe to do early

The final shape is an L, which occupies two columns and two rows, and the two rooms are still joined by a single one-wide vertical shaft. The thing worth noticing is that an upright 1×2 does fit down that shaft — vertical travel only ever uses one column. So of this level's two fuses, the vertical one is safe to make upstairs, and only the horizontal one, the one that widens the block to two columns, must happen in the lower room. The greedy bot does precisely the opposite: it fuses vertically in 3 moves, spends 1 more move completing the L up top, and then stops in front of the shaft forever.

4. Level 7, False Match — the nearest pair is the trap

This is level 5 through a mirror. The two rooms are joined by a single one-tall horizontal corridor, so the forbidden shape inverts: an upright pair is stuck and a flat 1×2 walks straight through. And the closest pair on the board, two cells apart, is exactly that upright pair. The level is one idea: the match begging to be made from the very first move is the one match you must not make. Fuse the horizontal pair, cross the corridor, and add the third shard vertically on the far side — the pedestal sits right beside the gate, so once you are through there are only a push or two left. The greedy bot spends 7 moves fusing the upright pair, another 7 fusing the rest, and dies at the corridor.

5. Level 10, Three Grooves — a 2×2 can only be completed somewhere 2×2

The final shape is a 2×2 and it takes four fuses (four shards closing into a square means four interlocking faces, not three). A 2×2 fits through nothing one cell wide, and this board is cut up by pillars into exactly that kind of gap. So the conclusion is short: the square can only be finished in an opening that is itself 2×2 — in practice, at the pedestal. Here too the nearest pair is vertical, and it fuses in a single move. The greedy bot takes it, spends 17 moves fusing the matching vertical pair on the other side, and then finds no reachable fusion at all: two upright blocks that can never get to each other between the pillars. Six sites gives you more slack than the earlier core levels, but slack is not permission to fuse wherever.

6. Levels 11 and 12, The Kiln and Restoration — order becomes geometry

The last two levels finish as an S and a T, deliberately offset shapes, so each block you fuse immediately becomes a traffic restriction for the shards still moving. Both take three fuses, over four sites and three sites respectively — every optimal solution of Restoration fuses in the same three places. The key to Restoration is its hub shard, the one carrying all three colours; the other three each attach to it in a different colour. Treat the hub not as the last piece you carry over, but as the piece you park in position and bring the others to. The greedy bot completes the statue on both levels — on Restoration it spends 33, 13 and 12 moves building a perfect T — and then cannot walk its finished work to the pedestal. Right shape, wrong place.

7. The preview highlight is your only safety net

Because fusing is irreversible, predictability is fairness. So the game plays each of the four directions one move ahead and highlights, in white, any joints that would lock — on both shards, and before they are adjacent. A lit joint is a warning that reads "one more push this way and this becomes permanent". The inverse is just as useful: if nothing lights up, no fuse can happen in that direction, because the colours differ or the faces are not joints. Push freely.

8. Undo is free — failed attempts leave no trace

Undo (Z) decrements the move counter too, so "try fusing it and rewind if it's wrong" costs you nothing in stars. Inputs that a wall refused never counted as moves either. Undo rewinds as far back as the start of the level, so when the warning tells you nothing can be pushed, rewind immediately instead of staring at it — especially for the "a shard is walled in" flavour, which is the same test the solver uses to prune dead states. If the solver would have thrown that position away, so should you.

FAQ

Do I need an account?

No. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for. Level progress and stars live in your browser only and are never sent to a server.

Is there a daily puzzle?

No — twelve hand-built levels rather than a daily generator, each verified by a solver as solvable together with its exact shortest solution. Any cleared level can be replayed from the level list, and your best rating is kept.

If fusing is permanent, how can undo work?

"Permanent" means the game gives you no way to pull fused shards apart. Undo separates nothing — it restores the whole previous position, which is why it can take you back to the moment before a fuse.

Does using undo cost me stars?

No. Undo decrements the move counter as well, and stars only look at your count at the moment you clear. Rewound attempts leave no trace, and a move a wall refused never counted.

How do I get three stars?

Par or better ★★★, par + max(5, 25% of par) ★★, clearing ★. Level 1 (par 11) gives two stars up to 16 moves; level 12 (par 44) up to 55.

How is par decided?

It is the solver's true shortest solution. The search works push by push but charges the steps you walk to reach each pushing square, so par equals the number of keys you actually press, exactly. It is not an estimate, so matching par really is optimal play.

Two shards touched but nothing happened

Both of the faces that meet have to be joints. Plain edges just bump, and from level 4 joints carry a colour and glyph so only matching ones lock. Anything about to lock is highlighted white beforehand — no highlight, no fuse.

I am colour blind. Can I tell the joints apart?

Yes. Each colour is paired one to one with a glyph: ◆ for the colourless joints of levels 1–3, then ●, ▲ and ■. Match the shapes and ignore the colour entirely.

My block will not move

It is rigid, so one wall or foreign shard among the destination cells stops the whole thing. There is no chain pushing either. When a position becomes unrecoverable, the board border and a one-line message say so.

Controls

Desktop: arrow keys or WASD to move, Z undo, R reset, N/P for next and previous level.
Mobile: swipe the board or use the D-pad below it, which also carries the undo and reset buttons. On first visit a three-card intro walks through fusing, rigid movement and the pedestal, and the ? button at the top brings it back any time.

Fusing plays a snap animation and a puff of dust. Turn on your browser or OS reduce motion setting (prefers-reduced-motion) and those effects are skipped — the rules are untouched.

Other guides

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This page is updated whenever the rules change. If you spot an error, tell us through contact.