Perfect Pour

Overview

Perfect Pour is a liquid-sorting puzzle about decanting stacked, colored liquids between transparent vessels until every vessel holds a single liquid or stands empty. Each vessel is built from layered units, and only the top contiguous run of one liquid can move at a time. A pour is legal when the receiving vessel is empty or its top liquid matches, and the run flows only up to the remaining capacity. The puzzle is won the moment no vessel still mixes two liquids. Forty hand-verified levels are grouped into five bands of eight — First Pours, Swirl, Surge, Torrent, and Deluge — rising from three liquids and a four-move solution to six liquids with tight seventeen-move plans. Every level was produced by a generator that proves a shortest solution before shipping, so no layout is a dead end on arrival. Undo is limited to five per level and a one-step hint to three, and restart is always free. Progress through the bands is stored locally, and every liquid also carries its own fill pattern — dots, stripes, waves, grid, triangles, or rings — so the puzzle never depends on color alone.

How to Play

Click or tap a vessel to lift it, then click or tap the vessel you want to pour into. The top matching layers flow across automatically, stopping when the run ends or the target fills. Tap the lifted vessel again to cancel. On keyboard, use the arrow keys or Tab to move the focus outline between vessels, Enter or Space to pick up and pour, U to undo, H for a hint, R to restart the level, and P to pause. The hint button highlights one pour that keeps the level solvable. Watch the badges above marked vessels: they announce a one-time capacity change, such as 4→3 or 4→5, that triggers right after that vessel's first pour.

Tips & Strategy

Empty vessels are your working space, so protect them. Before each pour, ask whether the target will still accept liquid afterward; sealing a vessel under a mismatched top can strand the layers you needed to reach. A strong habit is to solve one liquid completely before starting the next, because every finished vessel becomes reliable free headroom. When a marked vessel shows a shrink badge, plan its first pour carefully: after the shift its capacity drops, and the shrink only ever removes empty headroom, so a vessel already holding more than its new size simply keeps its contents with no room left. Triggering a shrink while the vessel is nearly empty preserves the most flexibility, while a grow badge is best triggered early to bank the extra space. Save undos for genuine dead ends rather than small inefficiencies, and spend a hint when you cannot see the next safe consolidation — it always points at a pour that keeps the level solvable. If pours start cycling between the same vessels, restart and change the opening order.

What Makes It Distinct

Most liquid-sort puzzles treat every vessel as identical forever. Perfect Pour marks one or two vessels per level with a capacity that changes exactly once, right after their first pour, and both the level intro and a permanent badge announce the shift in advance. That single twist converts memorized sorting habits into genuine planning: the board's geometry changes mid-solution, and the player chooses when it happens. Every shipped level is solver-verified with the shift modeled, the one-step hint runs the same search at play time, and the pattern fills keep every layer readable without relying on color.