Bolt Board

Overview

Bolt Board is a screw-removal puzzle about dismantling a stack of overlapping metal plates one bolt at a time. Each plate is pinned by one to three colored bolts, and a bolt can only be removed while no plate above it covers its head. Clearing every bolt that holds a plate lets that plate drop away, and the level is won when the whole board is empty. The twist is a four-slot magnetic tray that catches every bolt you remove. Three bolts of the same color in the tray clear automatically, but filling all four slots without a triple ends the attempt immediately. A plate held by a single remaining bolt visibly pivots and sways around it, telegraphing that one more removal will send it falling. Thirty authored levels span three visual themes — wood, circuit, and workshop — rising from two plates and four bolts to six plates and twelve bolts in up to four colors. A full undo stack, a single solver-checked hint per attempt, instant restart, and local progress unlocks round out a session that lasts one to three minutes per board.

How to Play

Tap or click any fully visible, colored bolt to remove it; blocked bolts appear as dimmed, hatched ghosts beneath the plate that covers them and cannot be taken yet. Watch the tray along the bottom: it holds at most four bolts, and three matching colors vanish as soon as they land together. Keyboard players can move between exposed bolts with the arrow keys or Tab, press Enter or Space to remove the focused bolt, U to undo, H to spend the one hint, R to restart, P to pause, and M to mute. Levels unlock in order and can be revisited from the level selector on the start screen.

Tips & Strategy

Read the stack from top to bottom before touching anything. Plates drawn over others hide bolt heads, so the removal order is partly forced; identifying that forced order first reveals where your real choices are. The tray is the true puzzle. With only four slots, two pairs of different colors already mean defeat, so avoid collecting a second unmatched pair while a third color is still exposed. Prefer removing a bolt whose color already sits twice in the tray, since that clears space instead of consuming it. When a plate starts swaying on its last bolt, check what it currently covers: dropping it may expose several bolts at once, which can either rescue a crowded tray or flood it. Save the hint for boards with three or more colors; on two-color boards the safe order is usually discoverable by inspection. Undo is unlimited within an attempt, so test a risky branch and rewind if the tray turns against you.

What Makes It Distinct

Unlike plain unscrew puzzles where removed bolts simply vanish, Bolt Board routes every bolt through a shared magnetic tray, layering a compact match-three economy on top of the exposure logic. The same plate therefore matters twice: once for what it covers and again for the colors it will release when it falls. The pivot animation on single-bolt plates turns an internal rule into readable feedback, the single hint is verified against a solver rather than playing a scripted move, and every one of the thirty layouts is proven completable without spending it.