Honeycomb Pick

A steady-hands candy game. Every disc of honeycomb toffee has a shape pressed into it, and you pick away the candy around it, crunch by crunch, until the shape comes free. Touch the shape once and it snaps. 81 shapes, nine stalls down a night market, and a Steady Hand that might just save a slip.

How to play

Hold to lower the pick onto the candy, then drag it over the pieces around the shape. The tip sits a little above your finger or cursor, so you can see what it’s about to touch. Every piece it touches breaks, pays 2 to 4 coins and fills the bar. Fill the bar and the shape is carved out. Break a piece of the shape itself and it snaps, unless your Steady Hand saves it. Then you can Retry or Skip, or, once a level, spend 500 coins on a sugar patch to carry on with the candy as you left it. The first level forgives your first slip.

Tips

• Don’t drag across the shape to reach the other side. Let go, move, and press again there. The pick stops cutting as soon as it lifts and starts again just under half a second after you press.
• A piece breaks if the tip so much as grazes it. Near the shape, use short drags and work from the outside in.
• You don’t always need every chip. The bar fills at each shape’s own mark, sometimes a few pieces short of all of them, so clear the easy ones first.
• Spend your first coins on Steady Hand. Without it, every slip snaps the shape; its first level gives a 6% chance to save one slip a level.
• Tip Jar adds a coin to every chip for each level you buy, so everything else comes sooner.

Shapes, stalls and upgrades

There are 81 shapes, from a plain circle and a heart to a pagoda, a steam train and a hot air balloon. The first discs break into as few as 17 pieces, the last ten into 54 to 72. After the last shape, the game keeps going with earlier ones. Every five wins moves you to the next stall down the market, from Lantern Alley past Fireworks Pier to Dawn.

The Stall, in the pause menu and on the win card, sells three things. Upgrades: Steady Hand and Tip Jar, 20 levels each, from 50 coins up to 20,000. A full Steady Hand saves 25% of slips, up to three a level. Picks: eight more at 2,500 coins each, from a brass awl to a chopstick, each with its own tip size. Sugars: eight more flavours for your candy, from matcha to black sesame. Each win brings the next one 25% closer, or you can buy it for 2,500 coins. Your progress is saved.