Coloring Pages

How to play coloring

1. Press PLAY to enter Doodle Dale, the world this game is built in, and open a picture.
2. Pick a crayon from the box under the drawing. It holds twelve colours, and one of them is already in your hand when a picture opens.
3. Tap any white area of the drawing. Colour spreads out from the spot you touched and stops wherever it meets a dark line, so the fill takes exactly the shape the drawing encloses.
4. A tap on a line fills nothing, and neither does a tap on an area that is already the colour you are holding. If the counter did not move, one of those two is the reason.
5. The undo button steps back one fill at a time and restores exactly the pixels that fill changed. It stays available until every fill on the picture has been stepped back.
6. The counter over the drawing reads how many fills you have made out of the number the picture asks for, which is between four and eight. Reach that number and a Finish button appears and then stays, so you can keep colouring and press it when you are happy.

The two ways to play

What to do when you are stuck

• The counter counts fills, not areas. A fill does nothing only when it starts on a line or on the colour you are already holding, so going back over a spot you coloured earlier with a different crayon moves the counter up as well. A picture with few open areas can still reach its number.
• If colour ran further than you meant it to, undo it instead of painting over it. Undo puts back exactly the pixels that fill changed, while a second fill laid on top leaves you guessing where the first one reached.
• The stars for a picture are fixed at a hundred for each point of its band, so stopping at the target and colouring in every last area pay the same. Carry on past the target because you want the picture finished, not because it earns more.
• The Daily Page draws from the pictures you have not finished, and its bonus matches the picture's own reward, so a higher band picture is worth more when the date lands on it. Taking the gentler pictures on the path first leaves the richer ones in the pool the daily draws from.

Controls

• Tap or click anywhere on the drawing to fill. The picture listens for pointer presses, so a finger, a mouse and a stylus all work, and the spot you touched is converted to the matching point in the drawing at whatever size the picture is on screen.
• The crayons, the undo arrow and the Finish button are ordinary labelled buttons, so they can be reached with the tab key and pressed from the keyboard. The drawing itself answers pointer presses and nothing else, so there is no keyboard way to fill an area.
• No hint, no 50/50 and no skip button appears on a colouring page. The mechanic declares an empty set of them on purpose, because none of the three has anything to do on a picture that cannot be got wrong.

Questions about coloring

Is it free, and is there anything to buy?

It is free, and there is nothing for sale. Stars are earned by finishing pictures, and the shell has no purchase path: when something costs more stars than you hold, the screen that comes up offers a free gift and a reminder that every solve pays stars, never a way to pay money. On a colouring page there is nothing to spend stars on at all, because the hint, 50/50 and skip buttons are not built here.

Can I get a colouring page wrong?

Neither. Nothing on a colouring page is timed, and a life is only ever taken by a wrong answer, which is something this game has no way to send: the Finish button is the only thing it ever reports. The Finish button appears once you reach the picture's number and is never forced on you.

Does a picture stay coloured if I come back later?

It saves which pictures you have finished, where you are in Doodle Dale and your star balance. The finished pictures and your place in the Dale are filed under this page's own address, so this wing keeps its own progress. The star balance and the daily streak are single entries for the whole site, so stars earned here spend in any other game. The coloured picture itself is not stored anywhere: it lives on the canvas while you are looking at it.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The drawing responds to pointer presses, which covers a finger as well as a mouse, and each press is measured against the picture as it is currently displayed rather than against a fixed size, so the drawing can be as large or as small as the screen allows.