Beginner's Guide to MeteorBall

MeteorBall is a puzzle about planning. A meteor is about to fly across a small board above the Earth, and before it launches you place a handful of pieces that will steer it into a wormhole. This guide takes you from your very first level to the point where the later levels, with their switches, permanent pieces and alien ships, start to make sense.

The goal in one sentence

Get the meteor into the wormhole without letting it fall through a hole or fly off the edge of the board. Everything else, from the pieces in your toolbox to the bonuses on the board, is there to make that harder or more rewarding.

The board is a grid of 8 by 8 glass squares. Some squares are missing: those are holes, and the Earth shows through them. The wormhole sits on one square, swirling. The meteor waits just outside the board, at the point where it will enter, and it always enters heading in a fixed direction. Your toolbox, below or beside the board, holds the pieces the level gives you.

Your first levels

The game eases you in. On level 1 and level 2 there is nothing to place: the meteor launches by itself, so you can simply watch how it moves. Notice that it travels in straight lines and crosses the board one square at a time.

Level 3 gives you your first piece, a deflector, and the original game's advice: "Drag parts from your tool box below to deflect the Meteor into the worm hole." From then on a countdown clock limits how long you have to prepare; level 4 warns you to get all your pieces placed before time runs out, and level 5 reminds you that a piece can be rotated after you place it. New ideas keep arriving one or two at a time, so each is familiar before it's mixed with the others.

Read the board before you touch anything

The most useful habit in MeteorBall is to trace the meteor's path in your head before placing a single piece. Start where the meteor waits, follow the direction it will travel, and move square by square:

• Where would it go if you placed nothing at all? Usually into a hole or off the edge, and that tells you where your first piece has to be.
• Which square is the wormhole on, and from which directions could the meteor reach it?
• Are there shuttles, satellites or astronauts on the board? Each one left unharmed is worth a bonus, so a good route goes around them.
• Are there squares you can't use? You can only place pieces on empty glass squares: not on holes, not on the wormhole, and not on squares that already hold a piece.

Then work backwards from the wormhole. Ask which square the meteor must pass through just before it, and which piece would send it there. Joining the path from the start to the path from the wormhole is usually the whole puzzle.

How the pieces turn the meteor

Every piece has a few simple rules, and the meteor obeys them exactly. The full list, with pictures of every rotation, is in the piece reference; these are the ones you'll use first.

• Deflectors (\ and /) turn a meteor that's travelling up, down, left or right by a quarter turn. A deflector is like a mirror set at an angle: the slope decides whether the meteor turns left or right.
• Curves bend the meteor by an eighth of a turn, so it can switch between straight and diagonal travel. Each curve accepts the meteor from exactly two directions.
• Bars send the meteor straight back the way it came, which is handy for making a short route longer or for turning a dead end into a path.

If the meteor reaches a piece from a direction the piece doesn't support, the piece is destroyed and the meteor heads straight up. This rule comes from the original game. It costs no points, but it usually wrecks the plan, so check the direction the meteor will arrive from when you place each piece.

Placing, rotating and removing

Drag a piece from your toolbox onto an empty square, or tap the piece and then tap the square. Select a placed piece to rotate it or to take it back into the toolbox. Rotating is often quicker than dragging a different piece: one deflector can face either way, and a curve can be turned to face the direction you need.

A countdown clock shows how long you have left. When the time runs out, the meteor launches whether you're ready or not. If you finish early, press Go to launch straight away. On longer levels, it's worth spending the first few seconds reading the board instead of placing pieces straight away.

When an attempt goes wrong

Nothing in MeteorBall is random. The same pieces in the same places always produce exactly the same flight, which makes failure useful: watch where the meteor goes wrong, and you know which piece to change.

• It fell through a hole: a piece just before that square needs to turn it, or the piece that sent it there points the wrong way.
• It flew off the edge: the last piece it touched sent it outward. Rotate that piece, or add one on the square before the edge.
• It shot straight up out of nowhere: it hit a piece from an unsupported direction and destroyed it. Check the piece's rules and the direction the meteor came from.
• It reached the wormhole but you still lost: on the later levels, every alien ship must be destroyed before the meteor enters the wormhole.

Change one thing at a time between attempts. If you change three pieces at once and the flight improves, you won't know which change helped.

Stars, progress and the next level

Every level has a Perfect Score. A win scoring more than a third of it earns one star, more than two thirds earns two, and reaching the Perfect Score earns three. Any win unlocks the next level, so you can always move on and come back for the stars later. Your progress is saved in your browser, on that device; it isn't tied to an account.

Points come from the length of the flight, from bonus pieces left unharmed and from toolbox pieces you didn't need. The scoring guide explains how they add up and why the third star usually means using fewer pieces.

What the later levels add

• Red switches and red pieces (from level 13): red pieces start switched off, and the meteor passes straight through them. When the meteor crosses a red switch, every red piece flips. A switch works only once, but a later switch can flip the pieces back.
• Permanent pieces (from level 24): deflectors, curves and bars fixed to the board that you can't move or rotate. You have to build your route around them.
• Alien ships (from level 29): every one has to be destroyed before the meteor may enter the wormhole, so your route has to pass through them all.

The official level guide shows the starting board of every level, the pieces you'll get and what's new in each, so you can study a level before you play it.

Where to go next

• Play the official levels, starting from level 1.
• Read Scoring and the Perfect Score when you start chasing three stars.
• Try community levels made by other players, or build your own: Designing Great Levels explains how.