Tap Tap rules
In brief
The computer lights up colored cells. In Follow mode, you tap each color shortly after it appears, without falling too far behind. In Memorize mode, you watch a whole sequence, then replay it in order. A single mistake ends the game; the score and the grid keep growing as long as you hold on.
The start
You choose a mode, then a 3-second countdown announces the start. Every game begins on a 2 × 2 grid (4 cells). The cells are numbered, from left to right and from top to bottom. A small grid always shows the first colors of the app's palette, placed at random: the starting grid always has red, pink, turquoise and blue.
Follow mode
The first color lights up 1.5 s after the start. After that, the computer adds one at a regular interval, whether or not you have tapped. You tap the cells in the order they lit up. The same cell can light up twice in a row.
- The first 3 colors arrive 2 s apart.
- From the next one on, the gap shrinks by 0.02 s with each color.
- It never drops below 0.5 s, a value reached at the 78th color.
- When the grid gets bigger, the sequence starts over from zero after a 2 s pause, and the gap goes back to 2 s.
The allowed delay
You can fall behind the computer: up to 6 colors can be waiting for your tap. When a 7th color lights up while the previous 6 haven't been tapped, the game ends. Conversely, tapping when no color is waiting for you counts as a mistake; only a tap before the very first color is ignored.
Memorize mode
Each round is played in two stages. First the computer shows the sequence: the first color lights up 1.5 s after the announcement, and each color stays lit for 1.2 s (or 0.8 s once the sequence has 5 colors), with 0.08 s of darkness between two colors. During this time, your taps don't count. Then you replay the sequence in order, with no time limit.
- In the first round, the sequence has 2 to 4 colors, chosen at random.
- Every three rounds, it gets one color longer: 3 to 5 in the fourth round, 4 to 6 in the seventh.
- The sequence is drawn from scratch each round: it is not the previous one with one more color added.
- The same color never lights up twice in a row.
- A successful round earns its points, then a 1 s pause comes before the next round.
The growing grid
In Follow mode, the grid size follows your score: 2 × 3 (6 tiles) at 2,000 points, 3 × 4 (12 tiles) at 10,000, 4 × 4 (16 tiles) at 30,000. In Memorize mode, it follows the round. Each time the grid grows, the colors change places: you need to read the grid again. The details are on the Modes and grids page.
The score
In Follow mode, each correct tap earns two and a half times the number of colors already shown in the current sequence, rounded down. The longer the sequence, the more each tap earns; a tap made late even earns slightly more, since more colors have already appeared.
| Colors already shown | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tap points | 2 | 5 | 7 | 10 | 12 | 15 | 17 | 20 |
In Memorize mode, nothing is counted tap by tap: a successful round earns the sequence length × the round number × ten × the grid rank (one for the smallest, four for the largest), all multiplied by two and a half. Example: a first round of 4 colors on the starting grid earns 100 points.
The end of the game
There is no victory: a wrong color, falling too far behind, or an extra tap ends the game, and the goal is to get as far as possible. Only Follow mode has a built-in end: after 512 colors repeated on the same grid. The end screen shows the level reached: the length of the current sequence in Follow mode, the round number in Memorize mode. Milestones, unlocked at levels 5, 10, 18 and 28, show how your game went. A game of at least 500 points counts in the statistics and the leaderboard, which keep the last 50 results.