Cozy Puzzle
Snowglobe Sort
A color gradient puzzle in a toy shop window: swap the snowglobes until their colors step smoothly from corner to corner.
What you do
A cozy Christmas color puzzle set in a toy shop window on a snowy evening. Barnaby the beaver, the toymaker, keeps a walnut cabinet of snowglobes, each glowing with its own color around a tiny snowy scene, and he wants the whole window to glow in one smooth sweep before the shoppers come by. The globes have been shuffled. Swap them back until the colors blend evenly between the four corners, from midnight blue to dawn pink or from cranberry to cream. It is a calm puzzle of looking closely: no timer, no wrong answers, just the moment a row finally flows. When the last globe is home, the snow in every globe swirls and the window lights up for the people passing in the street. There are 40 shelves on the ladder, from 3 by 4 teaching shelves to 8 by 10, and Tonight’s window is a new shelf made from each date.
How to play
- Press Start on the title card. Shelf 1 teaches the idea, each shelf you sort opens the next, and Tonight’s window is open from the start.
- A finished shelf is one smooth gradient: the colors blend evenly between the four corner globes, so every globe has exactly one right spot.
- Globes on gold bases with a star are fixed and never move. Every shelf fixes at least its four corners; use their colors as guides for the globes around them.
- Swap any two loose globes, as often as you like. The shelf is finished the moment every globe is in its spot.
- Each shelf earns ribbons: three for sorting it in the fewest swaps possible (par), two within a few swaps of par, and one for finishing. Each hint costs a ribbon, never below one.
Controls
- Touch or mouse: tap a globe to pick it up, then tap another to swap them, or drag a globe onto another. Tap a lifted globe again to set it down.
- Keyboard: arrow keys or WASD move the cursor, Space or Enter picks up the globe under it and then swaps, Escape sets a globe down, U or Z undoes a swap, R starts the shelf over, H asks for a hint and M opens the shelf map.
- Buttons: Undo takes back the last swap, Start over puts the shelf back the way it began (Undo brings your swaps back), and Hint has Barnaby put one globe in its spot. The shelf name in the scoreboard opens the map.
- Toolbar: pause, help, restart (starts the shelf on screen over; ribbons, bests and other shelves stay), optional sound and fullscreen.
Tips worth knowing
- Every globe is a little lighter or darker than each of its neighbors, so sorting by lightness first gets most globes close to home.
- Work outward from the fixed globes: a loose globe right beside one should be only a small step away from its color.
- Look along each row for the globe that jumps out, then check its column before you swap it.
- Undo is free, so try a swap, step back and look at the whole shelf.
Accessibility
- Snowglobe Sort relies on telling colors apart. To help, every gradient also steps between darker and lighter, neighboring globes always differ by at least a set amount, fixed globes give you anchors, and hints place a globe for you. Each shelf was also checked with simulations of the two most common kinds of red-green color vision deficiency, but those are estimates, not tests with players, and the larger late shelves may still be hard to sort.
- Fixed globes are marked by shape as well as color: a gold base with a white star.
- Everything can be played with a keyboard: arrow keys or WASD move a cursor, Space picks up and swaps, and every button is reachable with Tab.
- Nothing counts down, swaps are unlimited, and Undo and Start over are free.
- Screen readers hear each shelf’s size and par, refused moves, hints and the finish, but sorting the colors needs sight.
- Reduced motion stops the falling snow, the snow drifting in the globes, the passers-by and the globes sliding: swaps happen at once, and sparkles still show with smaller bursts that barely move. Sound is optional and never needed to play.
Questions
Is every shelf solvable, and how is par worked out?
Yes. Each shelf is a blend of four corner colors in a color space made so that equal steps look equal, and all four corners are fixed, so it can only go one way round. Every shelf was checked so that neighboring globes differ by a clear step and no two globes are close to the same color. Par is the fewest swaps that can sort the starting shelf: the number of loose globes minus the number of loops they are shuffled in.
How do hints work?
Hint has Barnaby put one globe in its spot: the globe you have picked up if it is out of place, otherwise the first spot (reading across the rows from the top) that is missing its globe. A hint counts as a swap. Each hint costs a ribbon, down to one, and the count stays with that shelf through undo, start over, restart and reload until you sort it.
Does the game show which globes are already right?
No, only the fixed globes are marked, as in other color gradient puzzles. You judge the gradient by eye, and the shelf finishes by itself the moment every globe is home.
What does Snowglobe Sort save?
On this device: which ladder shelves are open, the most ribbons and fewest swaps on each shelf, your result on Tonight’s window, and every shelf you have started but not sorted, globe by globe, with its swaps and hints so far. Tonight’s window in progress is cleared when the date changes. If the browser blocks saving, you can still play, and the game says your progress lasts only until you leave the page.
