How to play Signal Rescue

In this guide What Signal Rescue is How the signal travels How to play Scoring and the ramp Keyboard controls and saving Tips Questions and answers

What Signal Rescue is

Signal Rescue is a placement puzzle for the browser. A grid seven cells wide and nine tall holds one source mast, a few amber stranded nodes, patches of purple static and some walls. The mast sends out a signal that weakens with every cell it crosses. You have a handful of repeaters and a storm timer. Put the repeaters where they carry the signal to every node before time runs out.

How the signal travels

• The source broadcasts at strength 5. The signal spreads up, down, left and right, never diagonally.
• Entering an ordinary cell costs 1 strength. Entering a cell of static costs 3.
• Walls block the signal completely.
• A repeater that receives any signal at all, strength 1 or more, re-broadcasts at strength 4. Repeaters can feed each other in a chain.
• Every cell the signal reaches is tinted cyan and shows the strength left at that point, so you can read the budget cell by cell.
• A node counts as linked when the signal arrives there with at least 1 strength.

How to play

1. Tap an empty cell to place a repeater. The coverage redraws at once.
2. Tap a repeater again to pick it back up. There is no penalty for moving one.
3. Link every amber node before the storm bar empties. The level clears the moment the last node is reached.
4. Use RESET to remove all repeaters from the current level. RESTART is a different thing: it starts the whole game again from level 1 with a new layout and the score back at 0.

Scoring and the ramp

Clearing a level pays 100 points times the level number, plus a time bonus of 1 point for each tenth of a second left on the storm bar, plus 50 for every repeater you did not need. Score carries from level to level, and the levels never end.

Each layout is generated from a hidden solution, so every level can be cleared with the repeaters you are given. Some can be cleared with fewer, and that is where the spare-repeater bonus comes from.

Keyboard controls and saving

Enter or Space starts a game, moves to the next level or plays again. R resets the repeaters, or restarts after a result. The game saves nothing: there is no stored best score, and closing or reloading the page starts over.

Tips

1. Read the digits. A cell showing 1 is the edge of the signal, and a repeater placed there still works, because it only needs strength 1 to fire.
2. Put repeaters at the far edge of the coverage, not next to the mast. A repeater at strength 1 extends the reach the most.
3. Count each cell of static as three ordinary cells when you work out whether the signal will arrive.
4. Chain repeaters toward the farthest node first, then see which nearer nodes the chain already covers on the way.
5. Moving a repeater is free, so try a cell, read the new digits and adjust. The only cost is storm time.
6. Know the reach. Across ordinary cells the mast covers four cells in a straight line, and a repeater covers three cells beyond itself.

Questions and answers

Does the signal travel diagonally?

No. It moves between cells that share a side.

Can repeaters be chained?

Yes. Any repeater that receives at least 1 strength re-broadcasts at 4, including from another repeater.

What happens when the storm bar runs out?

The level is lost if any node is still unlinked.

Is every level possible?

Yes. Each layout is built around a hidden solution that uses the repeaters you are given.