Bloom: a calm pipe-rotating garden puzzle

Bloom is a quiet little irrigation puzzle. Water waits at a tap in the middle of the garden, and the ground is criss-crossed with a tangle of pipes: straights, elbows and junctions, each one turned the wrong way. Scattered around the edges are flowers, and every flower stays a closed bud until water actually reaches it. Your job is to rotate the pipes, one tap at a time, until the water threads its way out from the tap and touches every flower, opening the whole garden into bloom. It is gentle, tidy and quietly satisfying, the kind of puzzle you can sink into for one level or twenty.

How to play

Tap any pipe to rotate it a quarter turn. Water flows out from the tap through every pipe that lines up with it, lighting those pipes blue as it goes. Keep turning pipes until the water has a clear path to each flower.

• Rotate: tap or click a pipe and it spins 90 degrees. The tap and the flowers are fixed, so only the pipes turn.
• Follow the water: pipes carrying water turn blue; dry pipes stay grey. You can always see how far the water has spread and which flowers are still closed.
• Bloom them all: a flower opens the moment water reaches it. Connect every flower to win.
• Undo or Restart: step back a turn, or reset the whole board, whenever you like.

Your progress is saved automatically, so you always pick up on the level where you left off.

Why it is clever

There is no guessing and no luck. Every board is built from a real, fully connected pipe network and then scrambled, so a solution always exists, and you can see your progress at all times as the water creeps outward. The trick is reading the tangle: which junction feeds which branch, and the order to turn things so one route does not steal the water from another. As you climb the levels the garden grows larger and the network more knotted, so the same simple rule keeps giving you harder, more tangled puzzles to unpick.

Tips

• Start at the tap and work outward, following the water one pipe at a time.
• Fix the pipes nearest the tap first. Everything downstream depends on them.
• Watch the junctions. A tee or a cross can feed two flowers at once if you aim it well.
• If a branch keeps coming up dry, trace back to the last blue pipe and turn the piece just beyond it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bloom free? Yes, completely free to play, with no account or download, in any modern browser on phone, tablet or desktop.

Does it work on mobile? Yes. Bloom is built for touch as well as mouse, so it plays the same on a phone as on a desktop.

How do I win? Rotate the pipes so water flows from the tap to every flower. Once they have all bloomed, the level is solved.

Is every level solvable? Yes. Each board is generated from a working pipe layout and then scrambled, so there is always a way to connect every flower.

Enjoy a good thinking puzzle? Try Fold or Untangle, or browse all Zamborin games.