Turn order

Time does not pass on its own in SilkWard. The board moves only when you do, and when it moves it always follows the same order. That order never changes with level data, never differs between acts, and never grows more complicated as the game gets harder. Learn it once and it holds to the end.

This page walks through it step by step. You do not need to memorise it — but when you want to know why a move ended in capture, the answer is almost always here.

Three big steps

Seen from a distance, every turn has three parts: you move, the board answers, you see the result.

The third step matters: after seeing the result you can still take the move back. "The board answered" and "your decision is final" are not the same thing. There is no losing explains why that sits at the centre of the game.

All seven steps

Inside the engine, those three parts open into seven:

1. Your action resolves. A move, an item, or switching between caravan members.
2. Items are picked up. Anything on the node you arrived at is collected automatically; there is no separate "take" move.
3. Contact check. If you walked onto an enemy, the turn ends here.
4. Enemy phase. Entities act in the order the level data lists them, within a fixed sub-order: chasers first, then patrols, then anything distracted by a bell stone, and finally rotating sentries.
5. Contact check, again. This time the question is reversed: did an enemy walk onto you?
6. Sight check. Every line of sight is recomputed.
7. Events are published. Movements, bells, opening doors — this list is what the animations draw.

Not during the move — at the end of it

This is the rule that surprises people most: passing through a line of sight is not being caught. Only where your move ends counts.

You can cross the whole corridor a sentry is watching and hide in the corner beyond it. Stop in the middle and you are caught; keep going and you are past. It is a simplification that keeps the puzzle readable — you can look at the board and work out the result instead of having to try it.

Why it is this strict

Because the order is fixed, the game's own solver runs exactly the same sequence. Every level's minimum move count, the path the hints draw, and the threshold for the Master star all come out of that one calculation. There is no gap between the rule you see on the board and the rule the engine runs — which means there is no moment where you can fairly say the game cheated.