Netwalk —A Network Puzzle Game | Play Free Online
First time playing? Learn with three interactive lessons.
How to play —Bounded & Torus
- Click any tile to rotate it. All tiles are free —no locked tiles in this mode.
- Tiles can be endpoints, straights, corners, T-junctions or crosses. Every pipe opening must meet a matching opening on its neighbor.
- Connect from the center tile outward. Pipes light up cyan as they reach back to center.
- No loops allowed! If a cycle forms, the entire loop glows red —fix it.
- Bounded: board edges are walls. Torus: edges wrap (top↔bottom, left↔right).
- Choose 3–25 rows and columns, try Daily, press Z to undo, or R for a new random board (replay on Daily).
Classic uses fixed boundary edges, allows loops, and includes locked clues. Cyan means connected right now, not necessarily correctly oriented in the final solution.
A first move you can justify
Try a 3×3 Bounded board. A corner elbow must point toward its two neighbors; pointing into a wall cannot work. Next inspect the adjacent tile: if the elbow points east, its neighbor needs a west opening. Rotate only after checking the other openings too. An endpoint in a corner can have two possible inward directions, so leave it undecided until a neighbor supplies more information.
If a move lights several tiles but leaves an unmatched branch, the board is not finished. Use Undo, check the boundary and reciprocal openings, and continue. For an illustrated reasoning sequence, read the constraint-solving walkthrough.
What changes between modes
Bounded is the default. The outer edge is a wall, the server sits in the center, and a finished board is connected and has no cycle. Torus uses the same center and the same ban on cycles, but the top edge continues onto the bottom and the left edge continues onto the right. A pipe that looks as if it leaves the board may be a wrap, so a corner deduction from the tutorial does not transfer. Classic keeps solid walls, allows cycles, and may lock some tiles. A locked tile is a clue you cannot rotate. Bounded and Torus do not lock tiles. An older hint that says every mode has locked tiles is out of date.
The server is the orange tile. Cyan means that tile currently has a path to the server. It does not mean the tile is in its final orientation. A later rotation elsewhere can break the path. In Bounded and Torus a cycle is drawn in red, and the board is not complete while that cycle remains. Classic can contain a cycle and still be unfinished for another reason: an opening that faces a wall or a closed side.
A routine for a larger grid
Use the boundary only when the mode has one. On Bounded, an elbow in a corner has one legal direction, because two of its sides are walls. An endpoint in that same corner still has two inward directions, so do not freeze it on the first glance. After a forced tile, check the neighbor that shares the new opening. The two openings must point at each other. If they do not, the earlier tile or this one is still wrong.
When a move is a guess, treat it as a guess. Undo is the Z key or the Undo button, and it only reverses your moves. It does not reveal the constructed answer. R starts a new random board, except on Daily, where R restarts the same date. Each side can be from 3 to 25. A 5×5 board is enough to learn the shapes. A 15×15 board is the same rules with more tiles to track, not a different puzzle.
What generation does and does not promise
The generator builds a connected network and then rotates tiles away from it. Bounded and Torus keep the generated tree. Classic may add an extra link between tiles that already face each other. Putting every tile back to the constructed orientation is a solution. Project tests replay stored examples, including thin rectangles and large squares. The page you are playing does not run a second solver on every new board, and it does not prove that your solution is the only one. Treat a contradiction as a reason to undo. Do not treat a cyan streak as a certificate.
Where to go next
The three lessons on the tips page use a 3×3 Bounded board made of buttons, so a keyboard can reach each tile. The Chinese guide covers the same completion test for readers who want that write-up. Daily is a 7×7 Bounded board chosen from the UTC date. Your move count stays in this browser. It is not a checked world ranking. If a board and a written guide disagree, use the contact page and include the mode, the size, and the browser.