Playable preview · Light & logic
Light Up
A little light. A lovely bit of logic.
One lantern can change everything
Your courtyard begins at blue hour. Place paper lanterns on the open tiles until every path is illuminated. The light travels straight along rows and columns and stops at the rounded ceramic planters. Two lanterns must never face each other along an open path. A planter marked with a number needs exactly that many lanterns directly beside it.
Choose Lantern and tap a tile to place one. Tap it again to pick it up. The Mark tool makes optional crosses, so you can record deductions without confusing notes with the goal. You can undo any placement, erase a mark or restart without a failure screen. Learn opens a tiny interactive garden before you try a full one.
Five ways to find your next light
- Begin at zero. None of a zero planter's neighbours can hold a lantern. Mark those tiles, then look at what remains dark.
- Count open neighbours. A two with only two possible neighbours needs both of them. Once its count is met, the other neighbours are safe to mark.
- Read a long beam. One lantern rules out every other lantern position in its uninterrupted row and column. Those paths still count as lit.
- Find a sole light source. A dark tile may have only one remaining position that can illuminate it. The lantern belongs at that source, which is not always the dark tile itself.
- Compare possibilities. On Hard, two planters can share most of their neighbours. Subtract their required lanterns to reason about the unshared positions. A logical hint will outline the relevant cells.
Questions
What are the rules of Light Up?
Light every open tile with paper lanterns. A lantern shines along its row and column until a planter or edge blocks it. Two lanterns cannot shine on each other. A numbered planter must have exactly that many orthogonally adjacent lanterns.
Do diagonals count?
No. Light travels horizontally and vertically, and numbers count only the four edge-sharing neighbours. Diagonal lanterns do not illuminate each other.
What does Mark do?
Mark adds a removable cross to a tile where you think a lantern cannot go. Crosses are optional notes. Choose Lantern to place or remove lanterns in one tap; choose Mark to make or erase notes.
Is every puzzle solvable without guessing?
Yes. Each original board is checked by an exact solver for one solution, and a separate logical solver must finish it using clue completion, sole light sources and, on Hard, combined exclusions. The in-game hints explain these deductions without playing for you.
What changes with difficulty?
Easy has a 5×5 courtyard and uses direct number and light-source deductions. Medium is 6×6. Hard is 7×7 and requires at least one combined exclusion or overlapping-clue deduction. Practice is unlimited; a different shared daily garden is also available.
Does this preview affect my daily streak?
No. Light Up is a playable preview with its own lantern collection and verified daily score. It does not change the nine released games’ daily progress. Practice never earns a daily lantern.
A classic rule, our own little garden
Light Up is also known as Akari. Its rules are described by Nikoli. The boards, code, paper lanterns, moth and courtyard artwork here are made independently for PuzzleGame.win. Every admitted board has one solution and a checked logical route.
The daily garden resets at 00:00 UTC. A verified solve earns a named patterned lantern on this browser's collection string; an unverified solve keeps a plain local lantern. The daily score starts at 3,000 and loses four points per second and 300 for each logical hint, never dropping below 100. Practice keeps a personal best for each difficulty and does not add daily collectibles.
Visit today's lantern garden