KissyKat Games / CLAWDER / Wiki / How to play

How to play

Drag a piece. Complete a line. Keep a place for the piece you have not placed yet. That is the core of CLAWDER, a cozy cat puzzle with no ads and no loot boxes.

Place a piece

The tray shows three pieces. Drag one onto empty cells of the 8×8 grid. A piece only lands when every square of its footprint is open. You choose the order. The piece you place first decides whether the other two still fit, so look at all three before the first drop. Footprints are catalogued on Blocks & shapes.

Clear a row or a column

Any full horizontal row or vertical column clears. The blocks leave, the score ticks up, and those cells are open again. A clear that does not also make room for a large piece is a small clear. Look for the square that finishes a line and also reopens a corner or the center.

Combos

One placement can finish more than one line. A row and a column that both fill on the same drop score a combo bonus, and they delete more blocks than a single line would. Before you commit, check whether a one-square nudge turns a single clear into two. The score moves there, and so does the open space you need for the next tray.

Streaks

A single line clear is fine. Two or three lines at once is where the score moves, and where the board opens back up. Stringing those clears together is the streak: momentum you can feel on the main puzzle and on the Daily Challenge, which puts a multiplier on the run. The practical version is in the high score guide.

Cat Mode boards

From level 10, Cat Mode swaps the plain rectangle for a cat-shaped board. Cells outside the silhouette are not playable, so a line may be shorter than eight and a 3×3 may have nowhere to sit. Read the cutout before you read the tray. The generator still hands you pieces; the silhouette decides which of them strand you.

Daily Challenge

Once a day, everyone gets the same board. The deal is seeded, which is why your Daily Challenge matches someone else's. On the game page this mode is the two-minute run: a clock, a saved attempt if you step away, and a leaderboard of fastest times. It is practice with a shared answer key. The habits transfer back to the main puzzle, where the pressure is the space left on the grid. More of those habits are in the high score guide.

When to use a power-up

Three power-ups sit beside the board. You get charges through gameplay, and you can also recharge them with Meow Bucks. Spend them when the tray cannot land, not because a charge is sitting there.

• Scratch removes a single square. Use it when one filled cell is blocking an otherwise clean line, or when a 3×3 is one cell short of a home.
• Purr Power clears a full row or column. Use it when a line is almost a wall and smaller fixes will not reopen the board.
• Cat Nap swaps the current tray for three new pieces. Use it when every piece in the tray is the wrong shape for the holes you have left, and moving them around cannot help.

If you are new to the board, start with Getting started. If you want the short version of purchases, lives, and privacy, use the FAQ.