How to play
Unblock The Game
Also known as Unblock It, Sliding Block Puzzle, Block Escape Puzzle, Slide to Unblock
- 100K+ downloads
- On Google Play since 2021
- Free to play
What is Unblock The Game?
Unblock The Game is a sliding-block puzzle played on a small rectangular grid packed with blocks of different lengths. Each block can only slide along its own axis - horizontal blocks left and right, vertical blocks up and down - and nothing may be lifted or turned. Your job is to shuffle the surrounding blocks out of the way so the target block has a clear run to the exit.
How to play Unblock The Game
Setting up the board
A rectangular grid is packed with blocks of varying lengths, some lying horizontally and some vertically, with only a handful of empty cells left over. One block is the target, marked in a distinct colour, and one edge of the grid carries an opening. Levels grow harder by adding blocks and removing free space, not by changing the rules.
How it works
- Drag a block along its own axis only: horizontal blocks move left and right, vertical blocks move up and down.
- Blocks never rotate and never change orientation.
- A block slides only through empty cells - it cannot pass over, under or through another block.
- A block may travel as many free cells as are available in one drag.
- Only the target block may leave the grid, and only through the marked exit.
- Every move is reversible: sliding a block back undoes it exactly, so no position is ever permanently ruined.
- Relax mode adds no constraints; timed and competition modes keep the same board rules and add a clock or a move count.
How to solve
You win when every block between the target and the exit has been cleared and the target block slides out through the opening. Modes with scoring also track your move count or your time.
Solving tips
- Work backwards from the exit. Identify exactly which blocks stand in the target's path, then ask what is blocking each of those. Building this dependency chain - often five or six pieces deep on hard boards - turns guessing into a plan.
- Track empty cells rather than blocks. A board with two free cells has very few legal moves; find those cells first and list which pieces can actually reach them.
- Free the most constrained piece first. A long block with only one legal direction is the bottleneck of the whole board - moves that give it room tend to unlock everything downstream.
- Expect to move pieces the wrong way. A block often has to slide away from the goal to open the cell another piece needs. If you refuse counterintuitive moves, hard levels become unsolvable in practice.
- If you have made a dozen moves and the target is no closer, reset rather than digging deeper. Because the puzzle is fully reversible you have lost nothing.
About this puzzle
Unblock puzzles belong to the sliding-block family, which is genuinely old even though this mobile form is not.
Lewis W.
Hardy's Pennant Puzzle, later sold widely as Dad's Puzzler, was patented in 1912 and is one of the earliest sliding puzzles built from rectangular rather than square pieces; the Klotski and Huarong Dao designs are close relatives.
The specific rule that every block moves along one axis only was arrived at independently in the 1970s by Nob Yoshigahara in Japan and Don Rubin in the United States, and Yoshigahara's version reached the US market as Rush Hour in 1996.
Frequently asked questions
No. Each block is permanently fixed to its orientation and can only slide back and forth along that one axis. Blocks also cannot jump over one another or leave the board - only the target block exits, and only through the opening.
The board and the rules are identical in every mode; only the pressure changes. Relax mode has no clock and no move limit so you can plan freely, timed mode adds a countdown, and competition mode ranks your speed or move count.
Yes - levels are built from a solved position or verified by a solver before they ship. Better still, sliding-block moves are always reversible, so unlike sorting puzzles you can never make a level unsolvable by playing badly; you can only waste moves.
In relax mode you can take as many as you like, though many levels display a par count produced by a solver. Matching that optimal count is the real challenge, and optimal solutions frequently contain moves that appear to go the wrong direction.
Difficulty comes from the length of the blocking chain and the shortage of empty cells, not from the piece count. One well-placed block can add several forced moves, and generalised sliding-block puzzles are known to be computationally hard.
