Stringing the first bow…
No ads in Arrow Rescue — just you, the quiver and thirty slabs of night-stone
Play Arrow Rescue: The Silver Arrows of Selene — a free arrow-escape puzzle in your browser
Arrow Rescue: The Silver Arrows of Selene is a free browser arrow-escape puzzle. Every rune only flies the way it points — shatter moon crystals, break the warded shards and silver cages, empty thirty slabs of night-stone across four Greek myth acts and free the moon goddess Selene from the Hollow Crown.
Arrow Rescue is a free browser-based arrow-escape logic puzzle built on Greek myth. Menoetius, Titan of the rage that arrives before thought, struck Selene's moon-chariot out of the sky, fired her silver arrows into a slab of night-stone and locked the goddess in the Hollow Crown. You are Atalanta, princess of Arcadia — and the whole game is one sentence of law: a rune only ever travels the way it points.
From that single rule the game gets its depth: runes shatter whatever they land against but are gone the moment their line is clear, warded crystals demand two impacts from two directions, cages hold the moon's beasts hostage, and two runes that face each other across an empty cell are wedged for ever. Thirty chapters, four acts, and an endless Silver Current — every one of them proven solvable before you ever see it.
How to play
- Read the line. Tap (or hover) a rune: the dotted path shows exactly where it will fly and the ring shows where it will stop. Green means the rune leaves the slab; amber means it would be sealed there for good, and that tap asks for a second confirmation.
- Send it home. If nothing hard stands between the rune and the rim of the slab, or between it and a rift in the floor, the rune is gone — and the count that holds Selene's prison shut drops by one.
- Break what is in the way. A rune stops dead against a moon crystal or a silver cage but shatters it in the same breath. That impact is the only tool in the game: no path is ever opened except by spending a rune to open it.
- Mind the wards. A warded crystal needs two impacts — the first cracks the rune-ring, the second shatters the shard — so a ward must sit where two different lines of flight cross. Plan for it.
- Never build a joust. Two runes facing each other across one empty cell can never move again, and neither can anything queued behind them. Wedged runes are what ends a chapter early.
- Empty the slab. No runes and no cages left: that is the win. Rock is permanent, rifts are doors, and every star is measured against a proven par line.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Hover / first tap | Read the rune's line of flight |
| Click / second tap | Send the rune home |
| U | Undo — unlimited, always |
| H | Hint — the solver's own best move (three a chapter) |
| R | Restart the chapter |
| Esc | Pause |
What sits on the slab
| Piece | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Rune (arrow) | Flies its own row or column, the way it points, until something stops it |
| Moon crystal | Shatters on the first impact — the game's only key to a closed road |
| Warded crystal | Takes two impacts, from two different directions; the first cracks the ward |
| Silver cage | A moon-beast inside; a rune that hits it breaks the cage and frees the beast |
| Rift | A hole in the floor — a rune that reaches it leaves for good |
| Rock spur | Permanent. Anything aimed at it is aiming at nothing at all |
The four acts of the campaign
| Act | Chapters | What it teaches |
|---|---|---|
| I · The Fallen Chariot | 1–8 | The one law of the quiver, long lines, and the first cage |
| II · The Night-Stone Gallery | 9–16 | Rifts, causeways and rock spurs that crop your lines of flight |
| III · The Shattered Mirror Garden | 17–24 | Warded crystals: two impacts, two directions, one order |
| IV · The Hollow Crown | 25–30 | Everything at once, in the dark, with the seal running out |
Campaign versus the Silver Current
| Campaign | Endless — the Silver Current | |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Thirty chapters in four acts, each with its own slab, lore and measured par | Rounds of five, six and seven squares that never repeat |
| Difficulty | Five to eleven runes a slab, wards from Act III, cages throughout | Grows with you: more runes, more crystal, more cage every round |
| Tools | Unlimited undo, three hints a chapter | The same — nothing is ever taken from you but your own taps |
| What you chase | Stars: one for the win, three for the proven par line | One number, kept on your device |
Why par is a number you can trust
Most puzzle games invent a three-star target. This one measures it. Every baked chapter was carved by a deterministic generator and then proved: a reference solver searched the slab under exactly the rules you face — escapes, shatters, wards, wedges — and the shortest winning tap count it found is replayed move-for-move before the chapter ships. Three stars means matching that line tap for tap, so par is never a guess and the in-game hint is never an opinion: it is the same search, run on your board.
Strategy that actually works
- Read before you spend. The order of taps is the whole game. Two taps in the wrong sequence can wedge a slab that one different first tap would have opened.
- Send long lines early. A rune with far to fly wants a crowded slab — neighbours give it things to shatter and cells to stop in. Send the short lines last.
- Spend a rune to open a road. Parking a rune against a crystal is not waste; it is how every wall in this game comes down. But know which rune you are sacrificing before you commit the second.
- Cross the wards. Circle a warded crystal and find the two runes whose lines cross over it. If only one line crosses it, that ward is a trap you built.
- Free cages early. Cages block more lines than crystals do, and every tap you plan around them gets more expensive as the slab empties.
- Undo is free. The game never punishes looking. The only thing it cannot give back is a slab you sealed by choice.
Technical notes
The whole game is one self-contained page: no third-party scripts, no trackers, and no network calls after load. The slab, the runes, the moon and the beasts are all drawn in code on an HTML5 canvas, the sound is synthesized in WebAudio, and the layout is recomputed on every resize — the same chapter plays on a 320-pixel phone and on a desktop monitor.
Levels are carved by a seeded generator, so the same chapter is the same puzzle on every device, then proved by a bundled reference solver (bounded search with wedge and deadlock detection) before the layout and its par are baked into the level data. Endless rounds are generated and proved the same way at runtime, which is why the Silver Current can never hand you a dead board. Progress and stars are stored locally under arrowrescue.save.v1; nothing is uploaded, because there is no server.
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Arrow Rescue: The Silver Arrows of Selene — frequently asked questions
What is Arrow Rescue: The Silver Arrows of Selene?
It is a free browser puzzle in the arrow-escape family, wrapped in Greek myth. Each chapter is a slab of night-stone holding runes, moon crystals, warded crystals and silver cages. A rune can only ever travel the way it points, so the puzzle is never about reflexes — it is about the order in which you send the runes home. Thirty chapters across four acts, plus an endless Silver Current.
How do you actually play an arrow-puzzle board?
Tap a rune and it flies along its own row or column. It stops dead against anything hard and shatters anything breakable — moon crystals and silver cages — which is the only way a path is ever opened for the runes behind it. If the line is clear all the way to a rift, or to the rim of the slab, the rune is gone. The chapter ends when no runes and no cages are left.
What makes a chapter impossible to finish?
Two runes facing each other across a gap, and a rune that shuffles up behind such a pair, are wedged for good: neither one can ever move again, so the slab can never be emptied. The game spots a wedged rune the instant it appears and a tap that would create one is previewed in amber and asks for a second tap, so you are told before you spend it — and undo is unlimited.
What is a warded crystal and why does it need two runes?
A warded crystal is a moon crystal with a rune-ring around it: the first impact cracks the ward, the second one breaks the crystal, and one rune cannot do both because it stops against the crystal the first time. So a ward has to stand where two different lines of flight cross. Both taps are real taps and both count towards par.
Is there an endless mode?
The Silver Current. Rounds of five, six and seven squares with growing numbers of runes, crystals and cages, and the slab is generated and then proved solvable before you are allowed to see it, so it can never hand you a board that cannot be won. It ends when you seal a slab by accident, or when you stop.
Does it work on a phone, and does it need a download?
There is no download, no account and no install: it is one HTML5 page that runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone, including a 320-pixel screen. Tap a rune to see its line of flight, tap again to send it. Progress and stars are kept in your own browser.