The hint system was designed to answer one question: a player stuck on a level should never have to quit the game. And the price for that is neither money nor a star.
Three tiers
- Region. The next key node or object in the solution chain is highlighted. It says "look here" and does not say why.
- Steps. The solver's first three moves from your current position are drawn as arrows.
- Solution. The full solution is shown as a ghost trail.
The tiers open in order; you can stop wherever you like.
No tier is paid or limited, and none of them affects the Master star; that star is measured in moves anyway.
The struggle signal
When the game notices you are stuck, the hint button trembles gently. It reveals nothing — it just reminds you it is there.
The signal is measured like this: if you go a certain number of moves in a row without getting closer to a solution — that is, the solver distance is not dropping — the button trembles. The threshold is not fixed; it is half the level's par, clamped between four and ten.
Why the threshold follows par
It used to be a flat eight moves. Measurement showed that working backwards: in act 1's short levels (par 6) eight wasted moves is longer than the whole level — so the signal arrived latest exactly while the player was still learning the rules. In act 3, where par passes twenty, it arrived earliest, mistaking thinking for being stuck.
Tying it to half of par put the ratio in roughly the same place in every act. The lower bound stops the signal firing after one or two moves in very short tutorial levels; the upper bound stops long deliberation in act 3 from counting as struggle.
One known limit
The struggle measurement runs on a narrow solver budget. It works from the start of the level across nearly the whole catalogue; in two levels the state space exceeds that budget, so the signal stays quiet at first and comes into play as the player advances.
Giving no signal was preferred over giving a wrong one.