Rotate Rings

Rotate Rings is a puzzle game from Ouaz Games about untangling things. Every level is a knot of rings, hooks and pins held together by small locks. Turn a ring until its gap lines up with the lock and it slips free. Get every piece out and the level’s done. If you’ve ever fiddled with a metal disentanglement puzzle and wondered how the ring ever went on, it’s the same itch, only on a screen.

The first levels of Rotate Rings take a few seconds. Level 1 is just two rings and one lock. Then the knots grow: rings sit inside rings, a pin blocks the only gap you need, and getting one piece out is what opens the way for the next. There’s no timer and no move limit, so you can turn things around until the order clicks.

Turning rings and sliding pins

Drag a ring to spin it around its center, and drag a pin to slide it along its track. A piece that isn’t hooked to anything anymore slides off the board on its own. That’s the whole game. Everything else is working out which piece has to move first.

When a Rotate Rings level won’t open

Reset puts the level back the way it started. The bomb removes one piece of your choice, and Skip moves you on to the next level. Both the bomb and Skip have a small video icon on them, so they cost you a short ad. Fair enough, but it means a stuck level usually pays off more with a reset than with a shortcut.

Reading a knot before you touch it

Look for the piece that’s held by a single lock. It’s almost always the first one out. Before you spin a big outer ring, check which smaller pieces hang on it, because they move with it. And when two rings share a lock, free the one on top first.

Themes, colors and art levels

Rotate Rings lets you switch between a light and a dark theme, change the background, and unlock new ring colors as you go. Some levels are art levels that draw a picture once you’ve solved them.

Playing with a keyboard

On a phone or with a mouse, Rotate Rings is all plain dragging. On a keyboard, the arrow keys or WASD pick a piece, Space or Enter grabs it, Left and Right turn a ring, and the arrows slide a pin. Press Space again to let go. N skips the level and Esc closes a menu.

More like this: the tube sorting in Magic Sort, the grid filling of Block Blast, and two more quiet games made by Ouaz Games, Pottery Pour and Colorizy. Or browse all puzzle games.