Frostpane Slider is the hollow’s window on the wider country. Four of its eight pictures stay close to home: the sugar bush at morning, the row of pails in deep snow, the roaring boil inside the shack and the snowshoe ridge at dusk. The other four travel west, to an Okanagan pressyard, a lavender hillside at sunset, a prairie elevator town at harvest and a timber depot glowing at nightfall.
Pick a picture and a size, and the scene breaks into numbered tiles that fly off into a scramble, leaving a single empty square. Slide tiles into the gap until the picture is whole again. Every shuffle is built to be solvable. A move counter and timer run along the top, the Numbers toggle prints each tile’s place on it, and holding Peek fades in the finished picture.
How to play Frostpane Slider
- Choose one of the eight pictures and a grid size of 3x3, 4x4 or 5x5 from the menu.
- Watch the tiles scatter into a shuffle, leaving one empty square somewhere on the board.
- Tap a tile in line with the gap, swipe, or use the arrow keys to slide tiles into the space.
- Switch on Numbers or hold Peek whenever you need a reminder of where each piece belongs.
- Finish the picture and compare your move count against the star targets shown under the board.
Frostpane Slider controls
Getting better at Frostpane Slider
- Solve the top row first, then the left column, and keep shrinking the puzzle toward the bottom right.
- Place the last two tiles of a row together; trying to set them one at a time usually knocks the first loose.
- Tap a tile several squares away from the gap to slide a whole line at once; it saves effort.
- Turn on Numbers on the 5x5 board; similar patches of snow or sky are hard to tell apart without them.
- Use Peek sparingly at first, and you will soon start recognizing each tile by its scrap of the scene.
Eight windows from sugar bush to prairie
We wanted the pictures to feel like a trip across the country taken one cold window at a time. The first four belong to the hollow itself, full of blue snow shadows, copper steam and lamplight. The other four are where our characters go when the sugaring season ends: the orchard ladders and cider barrels of the Okanagan, purple lavender rows in the summer dusk, and the tall timber elevators of a prairie harvest.
Each picture behaves differently as a puzzle. The roaring boil is full of strong shapes and warm colour, so it falls into place quickly. The pail row and the snowy ridge are trickier, because whole tiles can be nothing but snow and pale birch bark. That variety makes a familiar scene feel brand new at 5x5.
Moves, minutes and the gentle star targets
Two numbers sit above the board: moves and time. Sliding a whole line of tiles at once counts every tile that moved, so planning pays off. Below the board, a line tells you how many moves will earn three stars, then two, and any finish earns at least one. Nobody fails a picture; you simply finish it more or less tidily.
The timer does not start until your first move, so you can study the shuffle for as long as you like before committing. Spotting where the top-row tiles ended up before you touch anything saves a surprising number of moves. Players who look first often finish in far fewer moves than those who rush.
Questions about Frostpane Slider
Yes. Each puzzle is scrambled using legal slides from the finished picture, so there is always a way back, and every one is shuffled well enough to be a real challenge.
No. Stars depend only on how many moves you take, so turn on Numbers or hold Peek as often as you find helpful.
Start at 3x3 to learn the row-by-row method, step up to 4x4 once it feels natural, and keep 5x5 for a long, quiet evening.
