Quiet Vials: Pour Puzzle

Press kit

Fact sheet

Download press kit (ZIP) Logo, the current screenshot set and this fact sheet as plain text — everything below, in one file.

Description

Quiet Vials is a pour puzzle that declines the genre's usual business model. Tap a source tube, then a destination, and the top run of one colour crosses; sort every tube to a single colour and the level is done. Sort games are ordinarily sold on the dead end — one locally sensible pour strands a colour, and the exits are a video for an undo, a video for an extra tube, or a paid revival. This one sells none of those. Undo is free, unlimited and permanent; there is no timer, no move limit and no continue at any price; and a pour that would strand a colour is marked on the destination tube one move before you commit to it, without ever naming the move you ought to play instead. In place of the pressure it takes out, it publishes a standard: every level prints its par — the fewest pours its own construction proves are enough — and matching or beating that is what three stars means. Boards stop being uniform at level four, where a pour into an empty tube has to fit the tube's capacity; from level twenty-two one tube stays locked until the colour marked on it is finished elsewhere on the board. The same unchanged board can be scored three ways — against par, against the seconds, or against how much of the line was played without backing up — and switching between them moves the number on the HUD and nothing else. Quiet Vials is content-complete and has not been submitted to any store or uploaded to any portal. Two of its four builds make no network calls of their own; the browser build and the CrazyGames portal build each count anonymous gameplay events after asking on first launch. No build carries a third-party ad placement of any kind. Every build may show a card for another Canaria Studios game after a win — bundled first-party artwork, no ad SDK behind it.

What makes it different

• No fail state, and nothing sold to escape one. No timer, no move limit, no lives meter, no paid continue at any price. The worst position a board can reach is one with no legal pour, and the way out of it is Undo — free, unlimited, permanent, costing a move on the counter and nothing else. The genre's payment rail runs straight through that moment; this game gives it away.
• A published par on every level. The number on the board is the fewest pours that level's own construction proves are enough — not a designer's guess, not a curve fitted after the fact — and it is printed before you start rather than revealed with the stars. Clear at or under it for three; go over and the level still clears, for fewer.
• Tubes are not all the same size. From the fourth board on, a pour into an empty tube has to fit that tube's capacity, so what will hold what becomes something you plan around instead of a detail you can ignore. From level twenty-two one tube is locked and marked with a colour, and takes no pour at all until that colour is finished elsewhere.
• The trap is named, not sold. A pour that would strand a colour is marked on the destination tube one move before it is made — and it marks only the move that ends the board, never the move you should play instead. A hint with a coin price attached is a different product, and this is deliberately not it.
• One board, three ways to be scored. Pace reads the seconds, Precision reads how much of the line was played without backing up, Target reads moves against par. The board, the legal pours and the coins are identical under all three; only the number moves. There is deliberately no visible clock anywhere — a running timer in a game whose promise is that you cannot lose by accident would say the opposite of the promise.

Assets

The current screenshot set, straight off this site. Every image is a real capture of the build at 390×844 on a 2× screen — not a mock-up, not retouched. Free to use in coverage of Quiet Vials: Pour Puzzle, with a credit to Canaria Studios.

• site-01-rush.png 780×1688 PNG · 16 KB — Rush — tap the source tube, then the destination. Nothing is timed and nothing can be lost.
• site-02-par.png 780×1688 PNG · 18 KB — Par — a move target on every level, and the HUD shows how you are running against it.
• site-03-lens.png 780×1688 PNG · 18 KB — A run under the Precision lens: the par chip carries the lens reading beside the pours-to-par gradient, on the same board every lens deals.
• site-04-home.png 780×1688 PNG · 34 KB — Home: continue where you left off, choose how the run is scored, and take the daily board — which is offline, and yours alone.

Need a different state, a different device size, or a locale? Say which and we will render it — every screenshot in this repository is generated from a declared state (games/sort/store/shots.json), so there is nothing to hunt for. There is no preview video yet.