Why this exists
I saw a physical Huarong Road toy on Shopee, the kind with a battery, and wondered if I should buy one to fidget with. Before spending money I wanted to try the puzzle on my PC or phone first. I couldn't find a free game that also worked offline, so I asked Claude to build one. This is the result: a small, no-nonsense version that I can play on the bus, with no ads and no sign-up.
It is a hobby project, written with Claude Code.
Screenshots
How to play
- Drag blocks to open a path for the big red 2×2 block and slide it to the EXIT at the bottom centre.
- One move = one block slid in a straight line, any distance. Fewer moves is better.
- Each level has a par, the proven minimum number of moves (found by an exhaustive search, not guessed).
- Stars: finish in par or fewer for ★★★, within 1.4× par for ★★.
- Stuck? Use Hint (two taps: first the goal, then the exact move and why) or Show solution. Viewing the solution means that level earns no stars.
Features
- 100 levels from Starter upward, each with a verified optimal par.
- Daily puzzle, generated on your device from the date: same puzzle for everyone, works offline, harder at the weekend. Streak and week row included.
- Design stage: build your own puzzle (up to 50). The solver checks it is solvable, reports the minimum moves and grades it.
- Explained hints, plus a progress marker (closer / no progress / further) after each move once you have used a hint.
- Solution viewer: step or auto-play the optimal line.
- Undo / Redo, Restart, best score per level, optional timer (turn it off for no-stress play).
- 8 skins, English / Thai (ไทย, set in the modern loopless Anuphan font), sound, vibration and reduce-motion switches.
- Back up and restore your progress with a copyable code or a text file.
- Fully offline after the first load, installable as an app. No accounts, no network calls.
Install on your phone
- Open the live page in Chrome on Android.
- Menu (⋮) → Add to Home screen / Install app.
- It now runs offline. Your progress is stored on the device only, so use Settings → Back up progress before clearing browser data or switching phones.
The in-app Update button (bottom of the menu) fetches the newest version without touching your progress.
Develop
Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No framework, no runtime dependencies. The build inlines everything into one self-contained dist/index.html.
node gen/gen.js # regenerate src/levels.js (~25 s, deterministic)
node test/test.js # must print "OK: 100 levels verified"
node build.js # produce dist/ (page, manifest, service worker)
python3 gen/icons.py # PWA icons into dist/ (needs Pillow; run after build)
python3 gen/shots.py # store screenshots for the manifest (needs Playwright)
node test/pwa_test.js # manifest, icons, screenshots, service-worker list
python3 test/ui_test.py # end-to-end test at a phone viewport (needs Playwright + Chromium)
To try it locally, serve dist/ over localhost or https so the service worker registers (opening the file directly works too, just without the PWA parts).
Project layout
| Path | What it is |
|---|
src/solver.js | Board model and BFS solver (4×5 board, 20 cells) |
src/daily.js | Date-seeded daily puzzle generator, shared with the tests |
src/levels.js | Generated 100 levels ({id, par, g}), do not hand-edit |
src/game.js | All UI logic: setup, play, hints, solution viewer, settings, design stage |
src/index.html, src/style.css | Templates inlined by the build |
gen/ | Level generator, icon generator, store and README screenshot scripts |
build.js | Builds dist/ and stamps a content-hash build id |
test/ | Level verification, PWA checks, UI end-to-end test |
docs/ | Images used by this README (gen/readme_shots.py regenerates them) |
dist/ | Built site, committed and published by the GitHub Pages workflow |
More detail on conventions and rules for changing things is in CLAUDE.md.
Deploying
dist/ is committed. Pushing to main runs .github/workflows/pages.yml, which publishes dist/ to GitHub Pages, so rebuild (node build.js) before you push.
Social preview
docs/social-preview.png is 1280×640, GitHub's recommended size. GitHub cannot take it from the repo, so upload it once under Settings → General → Social preview. Regenerate it (and the other README images) with python3 gen/readme_shots.py after node build.js.
Credits and license
- Code: MIT, see
LICENSE.
- Button icons are adapted from Google's Material Design icons (Apache-2.0), see
NOTICE.md. The app icon, gear, globe and timer icons are original to this project.
- Thai text is set in Anuphan (SIL Open Font License 1.1, full text in
third_party/OFL-Anuphan.txt), embedded as a Thai-only subset so the game stays a single offline file.
- Huarong Road (華容道) is named after the Huarong Pass episode in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where Cao Cao slips away past his pursuers. The red block is Cao Cao. The in-app About (
?) panel tells the story.
