Troubleshooting

This game can be played under MS Windows using Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher. To play this game you have to allow to download and run ActiveX Controls and run components not signed with Authenticode for .NET Custom Control. For that in IE go to Tools, Internet Options, Security, Custom Level and check in all radio-buttons of Active content frame. After that click Safety Level and select Medium.

Rules

Marbles is a challenging game of strategy and skills. The goal is to arrange all the pieces in groups by color. The more neighbors of the same color each piece has, the higher the score. Keep in mind that each move decreases your score, and there is a penalty for an "Undo" operation. There is only one empty spot on the field at all times. The only way to move the marbles is to slip them through this empty spot. A marble neighboring the empty spot can be moved on it only if there is at least one neighbor of the same color at its new position. For example, in this position both yellow and green marbles can be moved, blue and light-blue can't.

In order to minimize the number of moves you can use a "tail jump". The "tail jump" is a way to move a marble on the empty spot when it is apart from it. A "tail jump" is possible only when there is a chain of marbles of the same color attached to the empty spot. In this case, you can click on any marble in the chain and it will jump to the empty spot, but there has to be at least one more marble of the same color next to the empty spot. In other words, a "tail jump" is a sequence of moves of a chain of marbles of one color.

Here you can move any blue or yellow marble, but you can't move either red nor green one.

Note: Be aware of dead ends - there are positions where you cannot make a useful move, and there are positions in which you cannot move at all.

Buttons

There are 3 functional buttons that you can use: Start - starts a new game; Undo - allows you to take one move back; keep in mind that there is a substantial penalty for using Undo Novice/Expert/Master - gives you a choice of the level of difficulty; the higher the level, the bigger the score you can get