01 - The game

Race to the target score.

The object of every game: reach the winning score first. Points come from buying cards - and every card you buy makes the next ones cheaper, so early cheap cards fund the big point-scorers later. Here's the whole table at a glance.

NOTE

This guide teaches Shiny Widgets. Other themes reskin these pieces - petals, pipes, and so on - and tweak a few details, but the core stays the same.

02 - Anatomy of a card

Every card tells you three things.

The art fills the card; a black band on top carries the identity, and a band on the bottom carries the price. Give it a hover.

NOTE

Cost, payoff, points - on every card in every theme. A few themes add one extra thing (a card name that matters, a second color, or connection ports); you'll pick those up once the basics click.

03 - Your first turn

Let's start a game.

Three tier-1 cards are dealt from the store. Read the cost band along the bottom of each.

For the first turn you usually want to take 3 tokens of different colors, matching the costs in the bottom row of cards (shown). You are saving up to get a card in a later turn.

The store - tap 3 different colors

Your bank

empty - tap tokens above

Tap three different store tokens to bank them.

04 - Buy a card

A few turns later - time to spend.

You've banked enough parts. Click a card you can afford to buy it - it joins your tableau and gives a permanent discount. Then the store refills and Rival 1 takes a turn.

The store

Your bank

Your cards

none yet

Rival 1

watching...

Glowing cards are affordable. Click one to buy it.

HINT

After buying, hold the hint button. Cards you can afford light up and the rest dim; every cost drops to what you'd actually pay after your discounts - a color you fully cover shows 0. Owning a card is what pushes matching costs down.

05 - Your stacks

Cards pile up by color - and the piles are your engine.

On your board, bought cards stack by color. Each stack is a resource: its height is the discount you get on that color, forever. And cards with a number in the corner also add to your victory points. Watch both happen.

Two stacks so far. Press Buy next card.

06 - Achievements

You can also score bonuses.

Each theme has unique ways to score, but the most common way is to collect 3 cards in each of 3 specific colors, as described by the achievement cards at the top of the board.

Colony Ship

You need one more red card. Press the button to buy it.

NOTE

Several achievements are on the table each game with different color mixes - first player to qualify claims each one.

07 - Other ways to score

Every theme adds one scoring twist.

The take-buy-stack engine is identical everywhere; the bonus layer changes. Tap a panel to replay its move. Bloom's gardens and Pipeworks' assemblies are big enough to get their own tours below.

Petals

Sequence scoring

Blooms score extra when placed in runs - chain your placements in sequence and each link pays out.

Petals Lite

Reserve from the deck

Reserve cards straight off the face-down deck - a hidden gamble only you get to see, plus a gold wild.

Shiny Widgets

Gold engines

Special cards mint a gold wild every turn while you own them - a coin factory on your board.

Shiny Widgets

Hybrid cards

Some parts pay two discount colors at once - one card, two stacks' worth of buying power.

Shiny Widgets

Coin-back cards

Buy one and it refunds a token of your choice from the bank - the purchase partly pays for itself.

08 - Widgets rules

Special to Shiny Widgets: blueprints.

In this theme, card names matter. Certain named parts belong to a recipe - collect the full set and the blueprint completes on the spot for bonus points. No extra turn, no extra cost.

RECON DRONE +5

You own a Logic Board. The Recon Drone recipe needs two more named parts.

TIP

Recipes are listed in the in-game guide; the name band on each card tells you what it can build. Watch what rivals collect - snagging a part of their recipe is fair play.

09 - Bloom or Bust

Grow a garden of matching halves.

Every bloom has a left color and a right color. Place blooms side by side so the touching halves share a color, and the garden pays a bonus for each match.

Two blooms planted, one match so far. Keep going.

10 - Pipeworks

Assemble one giant structure.

Components carry colored ports on their edges. No printed points here - your score is the size of your biggest connected assembly, and 12 linked pieces completes a megastructure. These are real components from the game, joined port-to-port.

0pieces connected

DYSON RING +4

Press the button and watch the assembly grow.

11 - Six themes

Three come free. Three come together.

Shiny Widgets, Petals, and Bloom or Bust are free to play. One purchase unlocks the other three - Pipeworks, Petals Lite, and Petals 6-Color - forever. Same engine, six ways to score.