How to play Bloom
Bloom is a flood puzzle. Your patch starts in the corner; each move you pick a color, your patch turns that color and swallows every touching tile of it. Fill the whole board with one color in as few moves as you can.
The rules
- Pick a color: your patch turns that color and takes in every touching tile of that color.
- Keep growing until the whole board is one color.
- Every board has a par, the move target, worked out by a solver. Meet or beat par for top marks.
- Quick play is five random boards, scored out of 50.
How to beat par
Grow toward the middle first. Tiles in the middle touch the most other tiles. A patch that reaches the center early has the most edges to grow from, so later moves swallow more.
Count before you tap. Before each move, look along the edge of your patch and ask which color would take in the most tiles. The biggest grab is usually right, but not always: see the next tip.
Look one move ahead. Sometimes a smaller grab now opens a huge one next move, because it reaches a big area of a single color. The solver that sets par looks ahead this way, which is why par can feel tight.
Clean up the stragglers last. When most of the board is yours, finish off the leftover colors in the order that removes them completely. A color you leave isolated in a corner costs a whole move by itself.
Stones never change. From World 2, grey stones sit on the board. They never change color and never join your patch, so plan your route around them, like water flowing around rocks.
The 5 worlds of the Bloom Journey
The Journey has 75 levels, 15 per world.
- First Bloom. Small boards and few colors. Learn how your patch grows.
- Stones. Grey stones never change color. Grow around them.
- Full Bloom. Big boards, more colors and stones in the way.
- Wide Garden. Full-size boards and six colors from the very first level.
- Stone Maze. Stones everywhere. Find the way around them.