Watercolors: Tips, Cheats and Strategies

Welcome to the Watercolors guide on Gamezebo. Watercolors is a deceiving puzzler which starts you off simply, setting out the basics and letting you get a feel for the flow of the game, but soon starts to dish out the punishment. When it does, it is unrelenting. You will grunt and growl trying to figure out some of these brain-teasers but the game will refuse to help you after a certain point unless you’re willing to pay for it. Sooner or later, you will be on your own.

While we’re not going to list the solution to every puzzle in the game – it would probably clog up all our bandwidth – we do have a few helpful hints that are worth bearing in mind if you’re going to tackle this head-on. Believe us, you’re going to need all the help you can get!

• The most important thing to remember is to keep your finger on the screen until you’re ready to move onto the next stroke. The moment you take your finger off, the game recognises that you’re ready for the next move and adds to the counter against you. This is especially important as in order to get the full three star rating, you have to beat a puzzle in as few moves as possible. The key to three-starring your way through everything is to be as concise as you possibly can.
• Also be aware that, at the start, the hint system is only good for five hints total. Once you’ve used them up, you won’t get them back and the only way to get more hints is to pay for them. So make sure you only use the guides when absolutely necessary and you’re desperate for help, unless you’re willing to cough up some cash for the trouble.
• A lot of puzzle solutions come from clearing your path by using a color not already part of a combination in order to break through a blockade, but when you do break through, make sure you retain some access to all the Primary Colours unless you have no further need of them in a particular puzzle. Quite often you’ll be forced to restart because you cleared a blue from your screen but you still needed it to fill one of the glowing empty holes.

• Always keep a second eye on the at-a-glance colour guide. If you forget which colors to mix, this will help keep things simple and remind you which colors you need to keep in play.
• With any of the Free Play boards, don’t be afraid to stop and study the board for a few turns. Observe and figure out how to tackle a puzzle before attempting it. Let the timer keep running down until you have it clear in your mind how to beat the puzzle, then storm it. This will also help you complete a puzzle in fewer turns, saving you trying to figure it out on the fly.
• Time Trials, on the other hand, should only be attempted when you’ve spent considerable amounts of time with the game. You’re attempting to beat these challenges in the fastest time possible. There’s no pause button or slowdown option. You either know how to play the game or remember the boards from Free Play and can beat them fast or you don’t. There is no middle ground. So build up your skills in Free Play first, then see how fast your reflexes are in Time Trials.

• Take a screenshot of a particular puzzle if you’re really stuck and carry it around with you. That way, you can take a look at it every now and then to see if you can figure it out without having to log into the game. Who knows, you might get a brainwave during lunch time at work, or maybe it’ll hit you when you’re out with a few mates in the pub. Maybe they’ll be able to help.

These are only helpful nudges in the right direction, but hopefully inspire you. Watercolors will frustrate and tax you, but it is a very enjoyable, satisfying experience. We hope our guide helps get you in the right frame of mind so you can tackle the game and make the most of your time with it. Watercolors is dastardly at times, but you can totally handle it.

Ray Willmott

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Ray Willmott is a lifetime gamer and enjoys a diverse range of titles, from shooters to point & click. He manages his own site, writes novels and is a narrative designer for two upcoming mobile titles.