What the spare tap is for: stars in Carillon

Every Carillon level has a goal, the fewest taps that clear it. A solver works it out before the level ships, so it is never a guess. Then the game hands you one tap more than that.

I put the extra tap there on purpose, and it changes how the game feels to play. Here is how the scoring works, and what that spare is really for.

Three stars, two, or one

A level gives you the goal plus one tap.

• Clear the field in the goal and you earn three stars.
• Clear it using the spare as well and you earn two.
• Run out with dots still on the field and the level stops, with a Retry button.

That sheet also offers one more tap, once a try. On Android it costs a short video, unless you have the Supporter pack, and on the web it is free. A clear on that tap earns one star, so a level you nearly had still counts.

The game keeps your best result on every level. Come back with a better read and the stars go up, and a worse one never takes them away.

When you clear a field, the sheet says how it went, in words like “Cleared in 4 taps, goal 4”. If you earned fewer than three stars, it adds the target, “Clear it in 4 taps for three stars”, so you know what to come back for.

What the top of the screen says

Two readouts sit above the field.

Taps is a row of pips. The bright ones are the taps that keep three stars, the quieter one at the end is the spare, and each tap you spend turns a pip into an empty ring. The goal is never written on the play screen, because the pips already say it: count the bright ones.

Stars is three small stars showing what a clear on your next tap would score. Spend as many taps as the goal without clearing, and the third star shrinks back into its outline. You see the cost of the spare the moment you start spending it, not at the end.

Why the goal is what it is

In the first four chapters, the goal has a clean meaning. Some dots on a field are sources: dots, or pairs of dots, that no ring from outside can reach.

• A source can only be popped by tapping it, so every source needs a tap of its own.
• Every other dot sits downstream of some source, so one tap in each source clears the whole field, in any order.

So the goal is the number of sources, and three stars means you tapped a source every time. A tap anywhere else pops some dots but leaves every source standing. That is why one wasted tap never sinks a level in those chapters: the spare is still there to tap the last source.

From chapter 5 each chapter adds a rule, and the goal comes from the solver’s full search rather than a count. A bell that rings by itself costs no tap, and hollow grace notes need not ring at all, so a field can need fewer taps than it has starts. A heavy bell needs two rings, so a chain may need help to finish. And when the order matters, a tap in the wrong place can cost more than one tap, so the spare is not always enough to put it right.

A worked example: level 3

Level 3 is small enough to read completely, and it is where the first big dots arrive. Its ten dots sit in two arcs, one across the top and one across the bottom, like the two halves of a circle. Each arc starts with a pair of big dots at its left end, then runs on through three normal dots.

The two big dots in an arc reach each other, and their rings reach the normal dots. The normal dots’ rings do not reach back to the big ones. So each arc is one source, the big pair, and the goal is two.

Tap a big dot in each arc and each chain sweeps its whole arc, from the low notes of the big dots up into the octave of the normal ones. Two taps, the goal, three stars.

Now tap a normal dot first. It pops its own arc’s normal dots and stops there, because none of them reaches the big pair. The big pair still needs a tap, and so does the other arc. That is three taps, the spare spent, and two stars.

It is the whole game in miniature. Most of each arc is not where its chain starts. The start is the pair that nothing else can reach.

A way into any field

On a level from the first four chapters, I count the bright pips first, since that is how many sources I am looking for. Then I hold the dots that the fewest circles pass over, because a source sits under none. To check a candidate, I hold its neighbours, and if none of their outlines ever includes it, it is a source. The generator grows chains from roots spread well apart, so once I have one source I look across the field for the next. Then I tap them, one chain at a time.

With rules in play, the same reading gets you most of the way, and then you plan the order: the chain with the home note last, the round bells in their numbered order, a beat dot’s chain on an odd tap. Reading a field covers both halves in more detail.

So what is the spare for?

It is for the question that holding cannot answer. Holding shows you what one ring touches, and on a busy field that is not always enough to be sure. The spare means your first try at a hard field can be a question, “what does this one really do?”, and the answer costs you a star, not the level.

Use it that way, then come back for three stars once you know the field. On the hardest levels, two stars the first time round is a good result, and the best score waits for you.

The goal rises as you go, and it never drops from one level to the next. Level 1 takes one tap, level 2 takes two, and from there it climbs to three taps at level 14, four at level 29, five at level 59 and six at level 201.

When even the spare is gone

The hint always shows the best next tap from the field as it is now, and asking for it never costs a tap or a star. If it says “No clear from here. Restart and read it again”, the taps you have left cannot clear the field, and Restart brings every dot back. The best next tap explains how it decides.