Game Guide
MyRin has three sorting puzzles that look alike and play very differently. How Hue, Temari and Kamon differ, the one rule all three share, and how to beat hard mode.
Ball sort puzzles are one of the most popular game types on phones. MyRin has three of them: Hue, Temari and Kamon. They share the same basic rule, and players often treat them as one game with three skins. That is a mistake, because each one changes a single thing, and that change decides how you should play.
You have a set of containers, tubes in Hue and Temari, lacquer stands in Kamon. Each holds a stack of pieces. You can lift the top piece of any stack and drop it on another, but only onto an empty container or onto a piece of the same kind. The level is solved when every container holds one kind only.
Because you can only reach the top of a stack, these are puzzles about order. The piece you need is usually buried under something else, and getting it out means finding somewhere to put whatever is on top.
In all three games, the empty container is everything. It is the only place a piece can go when it does not match anything on top of the other stacks. As long as you have one, you can always untangle a stack. Lose it, and the board can lock up completely.
So before every move, ask: does this use up my empty container? If it does, make sure the move leads straight to a result, such as completing a colour or opening up another container. If it does not, look for a different move.
Two other habits help in all three:
Hue is the classic. Coloured balls, tubes, one ball per move. Everything is visible from the start, so the whole puzzle is about planning.
Because nothing is hidden, Hue is the best place to learn the fundamentals. Try to read the board before you move: which colour is closest to finished, which tube can be emptied fastest, and which ball is blocking the most. A useful exercise is to plan your first three moves before touching anything.
Our Hue guide covers deadlock patterns.
Temari uses the same basic rule with traditional embroidered thread balls in bamboo tubes, and two important changes.
First, matching balls travel together. If three balls of the same colour sit on top of a tube, one tap moves all three. This makes some moves far more powerful, but it also means a single move can fill a tube faster than you expected and use up space you wanted.
Second, hard mode is played partly blind. Tubes are stacked seven deep, all the colours are in play early, and you can only see balls you have uncovered. At the start you see only the top ball of each tube.
That turns Temari into a game of information. On hard:
See the Temari guide for more.
Kamon replaces balls with Japanese family crests and tubes with lacquer stands. On easy and medium, each crest has its own colour, so it plays much like Hue.
Hard mode changes the skill being tested. All eight crests are drawn in the same gold, the stands are seven deep, and crests you have not uncovered are hidden. You can no longer sort by colour at a glance. You have to recognise each crest by its outline, and remember the ones you have seen.
The fix is to learn the shapes before you need them:
Pointed crests like kikyō and uroko are the quickest to recognise, so use them as anchors. And when two stands show the same crest on top, merge them before opening a new stand: it frees space without using your empty one.
Our Kamon guide covers all eight crests.
A good order is Hue first, then Temari, then Kamon. Each one adds one new difficulty to what the previous one taught.
Sorting puzzles are a clean exercise in planning: thinking several moves ahead, seeing which resources are scarce and protecting them. The hard modes of Temari and Kamon add working memory, because you must hold information about hidden stacks in mind while you plan.
They are also relaxing in a way speed games are not. The challenge is in the planning, not in how fast your fingers move, so you can stop, look and think. That makes them a good choice at the end of a day. Our article on puzzle games and stress goes into why.