Question 1

What is Firebird: The Golden Grove?

Accepted Answer

It is a free browser triple tile match puzzle built on Slavic myth. Koschei the Deathless has stolen the last clutch of the Firebird's golden feathers, the enchanted grove is greying, and the dryad Berehya is bound to the withering Great Oak. You gather the grove's charms in threes to kindle twelve feather-shrines, break Koschei's chains, thaw his midnight rime, and finally crush the needle that hides his death. Thirty chapters across four acts, plus an endless mode.

Question 2

How do you play it?

Accepted Answer

Tap or click a tile that has nothing stacked over it. It flies to the tray at the bottom of the screen, which holds seven slots. When three tiles of the same charm meet in the tray they clear at once and score. The chapter is won when every tile is cleared and the tray is empty; it is lost the moment a pick leaves seven mismatched charms in the tray with no third anywhere. A tile with a glowing rim is free to take; dimmer tiles are pinned under the layer above.

Question 3

What are chained tiles and rime tiles?

Accepted Answer

They are the two hazards. From Act II, Koschei's iron chains wrap some tiles: a chained tile cannot be tapped until you have made the number of matches shown on its counter, and every match anywhere grinds all chains down by one. From Act III, the rime of Koschei's midnight horse freezes tiles inside glassy ice that hides which charm they hold; each match thaws every rimed tile by one layer, and only a fully thawed tile reveals its charm and can be tapped.

Question 4

What do the three boosters do?

Accepted Answer

You get three of each per chapter. Undo returns the last tile from the tray to the board; it refuses the moment that tile completed a match. Shuffle redeals the icons among all unlocked tiles still on the board. The Firebird's Glance solves the current position and automatically taps the tiles of your next match, one after another.

Question 5

How do stars work?

Accepted Answer

Any win earns one star. Winning without spending an Undo earns two. Winning without an Undo and never letting the tray reach seven slots earns three. The tray discipline is the real skill of the genre: a full tray is the only way to lose, so a clean run with room to spare is a perfect run.

Question 6

Is every chapter actually winnable?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is proven rather than promised. Every chapter is built from a fixed seed: the layout, the charm placement and the hazards are always the same, and there are no random numbers while you play. During development a beam-search solver played all thirty chapters with exactly the rules you get, and only seeds the solver beat were baked in. The same solver powers the Firebird's Glance booster, so the hint always offers a line that is genuinely there.

Question 7

Does it work on a phone, and does it cost anything?

Accepted Answer

No download, no install, no account and no payment. The whole game is one HTML5 page: every tile, icon, hill and firefly is drawn on canvas, and every sound is synthesised in the browser with the Web Audio API. It adapts from a 320-pixel phone to a wide desktop window, in portrait or landscape, and progress and stars are stored in your own browser under the key foresttile.grove.v1. Nothing is uploaded, because there is no server.

Firebird

The Thirty Chapters

Chapter 1

Shrine Kindled!

The Tray Overfilled

Paused