Ink Shutter Sights

Ink Shutter Sights is a quiet, offline logic puzzle built around one idea you will not find in any other grid game: a number is not a count of its neighbours. It is a distance. It is how far that cell can see.

Shade cells black so that every numbered cell sees exactly its own number of white cells. A cell sees itself, plus every unbroken run of white cells going up, down, left and right, and its view stops the instant a shaded cell or the edge of the grid gets in the way. Two shaded cells may never sit side by side, and the white cells must all stay joined in one piece. That is the whole rule set. Everything else is deduction.

TAP A CLUE AND WATCH IT LOOK
Select any numbered cell and the board draws its four sight rays live, with the running count shown against the target. Shade a blocker and the ray shortens in front of you. A clue that reads exactly right goes quiet. A clue that sees too far turns crimson. Nothing is hidden behind a menu, so the mechanic teaches itself in about a minute.

THREE BOARD SIZES
Seven by seven for short lines and quick sessions. Nine by nine for the standard game, where the counts start leaning on one another. Eleven by eleven for wide open rows, where the big numbers stay unsatisfied for a long time and the connectivity rule does the late work.

EVERY BOARD IS VERIFIED
Boards are composed on your device and then run through a constraint solver that counts the answers. Only a board with exactly one answer is handed to you, so there is never a coin flip and never a guess. If a board somehow cannot be verified, a checked reserve board is used instead. You will never see an unsolvable grid.

TOOLS THAT RESPECT THE PUZZLE
Tap a blank cell to cycle it through shaded, kept white, and clear. The small ring is your own note that a cell must stay white; it never blocks a sight line. Undo steps back through your marks. Check flags touching shaded pairs, cells cut off from the rest of the white region, and any clue already seeing past its number. Hint reveals one correct cell when you want it, and the ledger records which boards you finished without one.

A LEDGER THAT REMEMBERS
Solved boards, best times and unaided finishes are tracked for each size and kept between sessions. Twelve merits mark the milestones, from your first finished board to five clean solves in a row.

BUILT TO STAY OUT OF THE WAY
No internet connection. No accounts, no sign in, no cloud. No advertising of any kind. No sound at all, ever, so it is safe to play in a waiting room, on a train, or beside someone asleep. Optional haptic feedback can be switched off. Nothing you do leaves the device.

The look is drawn from architectural louvres: cream paper, thin shutter slats, ink black blocks and one crimson accent. The whole board is drawn with vector graphics, so it stays crisp on any screen.

Portrait, offline, quiet. Just you, the grid, and how far each number can see.