FDS Arcade Puzzle & Card Games - Rules and Tips

The Puzzle / Logic and Card Games tabs in the arcade are the slower-burn end of the lineup - the ones you play with your brain, not your reflexes. Log in to play; boards are public and never reset. Here's how each one works and where the points come from.

Puzzle / Logic

Scrap Stack

Stack falling salvage pieces and clear full rows, Tetris-style, on a 10x20 board. Desktop: Left/Right to move, Down to soft-drop, Up or X to rotate, Space to hard-drop, P to pause (keyboard only). Scoring: line clears pay 100 / 250 / 450 / 800 for 1-4 lines, times your level; soft-drop +1 per cell, hard-drop +2 per cell, locking a piece +5. Tip: the drop speed ramps every 10 lines, so bank the big multi-line clears early while things are slow.

Mine Sweeper

Classic Minesweeper - reveal every safe cell without hitting a bomb. Desktop: left-click to reveal, right-click to flag. Mobile: tap to reveal (flagging is right-click, so a mouse helps). Scoring: revealed cells pay 5 / 8 / 12 each on easy / normal / hard, plus a speed bonus of up to 1000 (minus 5 per second) if you win. Tip: your first click is always safe - it and its neighbours are guaranteed bomb-free - so open into the middle to get a big flood-fill going.

Scrap 2048

Slide and merge salvage tiles to reach 2048 (and beyond) on a 4x4 grid. Desktop: Arrows or WASD to slide. Mobile: swipe. Scoring: each merge adds the value of the new tile. Tip: pick one corner and keep your biggest tile pinned there - work rows toward it and you'll avoid the locked-board game over.

Salvage Slider

A 15-puzzle - shuffle the scrambled tiles back into order 1-15 with the blank last. Desktop: click a tile next to the blank, or use arrow keys. Mobile: tap tiles. Scoring (on solve only): starts at 6000 and drops 15 per move and 4 per second, floor of 100 - so fewer moves and less faffing wins. Tip: every deal is guaranteed solvable; solve the top row and left column first, then it's a 2x3 puzzle.

Resource Match

Swap adjacent tiles to line up 3+ of a resource, Bejeweled-style, on an 8x8 board with 30 moves. Desktop: click a tile then an adjacent one, or drag to swap. Mobile: tap-tap or drag. Scoring: 20 per cleared tile, times a cascade multiplier that climbs each chain (x1, x1.5, x2...), and specials add +60 each. Tip: a match-4 forges a line-clearer and a match-5 or L/T shape forges a 3x3 burst - set those up on purpose, because the cascade multipliers are where the real score lives.

Crafting Grid

A nonogram (Picross) run - fill cells from the row and column clues to reveal survival gear. Desktop: left-click to fill or mark (per the mode toggle), right-click always marks an X. Mobile: tap to act, long-press to mark an X. Scoring per puzzle: base 400 / 900 / 1600 for 5x5 / 10x10 / 15x15, minus a time decay, minus 60 per hint and 100 per wrong fill. Tip: you get three mistakes before the run ends, so only fill a cell you can prove from the clues - use the X marks to lock in the "definitely empty" squares first.

Card Games

Klondike Solitaire

The classic patience game - build the four foundations up by suit from ace to king. Desktop / Mobile: click the stock to draw to the waste, click a card then click where to move it, or double-click to send a card straight to its foundation. Build the tableau down in alternating colours. Scoring: +5 to play a card to the tableau or to flip a face-down card, +10 to move a card up to a foundation, plus a win bonus of up to 8000 (minus 5 per second). Tip: flip your face-down tableau cards as early as you can - each flip is points and it opens up moves. You can recycle the waste back through the stock as many times as you like.

Loot Sort

FreeCell solitaire - move all 52 cards to the four foundations using the eight cascades and four free cells. Desktop: click a card or run then click a destination, double-click to auto-send to a foundation, or drag and drop. Mobile: tap-to-select then tap-to-place, or drag. Scoring (on win only): 1000 base plus a time bonus (up to 1200, minus 3 per second) and an efficiency bonus (15 per move under 120), minus 20 per undo, floor of 200. Tip: every deal is guaranteed winnable, so plan before you touch anything - keep free cells and empty columns open, because the number of cards you can move at once depends on how many you've got spare.

Card Match

Concentration - flip the survival cards two at a time and pair them all. Desktop: click cards. Mobile: tap cards. Scoring (on win only): starts at 6000 and drops 60 per move and 6 per second, floor of 150 - so fewer flips is the whole game. Tip: on easy there are 6 pairs, normal 8, hard 10. Commit each card's position to memory on the first pass rather than flipping at random.

Earning tokens

These games plug into the same economy as the rest of the arcade: +20 for your first play of a new game each day (up to 3), +25 for beating your own best (up to 3 per game per day), a 500-token bonus for a new all-time #1, and weekly top-3 payouts of 300 / 150 / 75 per game. Full details and where to spend it all are in the casino guide.

Good luck cracking them.