e Ed Caspersen

Loomstone User Guide

A complete walkthrough of everything Loomstone can do. For quick fixes to common issues, see Troubleshooting.

The Goal

Every board is an ancient carving that has come loose. Turn the stones until the pattern is whole again, then it lights up. Restore it within your allotted moves.

That is the whole game: one action, tap a tile to turn it, applied across four different kinds of pattern.

Getting Started

First launch

The first time you open Loomstone, a short tutorial walks you through turning tiles and closing a loop. You can replay it any time from Settings → Replay tutorial.

The home screen

The home screen has three selectors and a button:

  • Mode: Loop, Path, Loom, or Ascent.
  • Board: the board size, from 4x4 up to 12x12. Sizes you have not unlocked show a lock.
  • Difficulty: Novice, Adept, Artisan, or Master.
  • Restore: generates a fresh puzzle with those settings and starts it.

Each mode remembers the board and difficulty you last used, and the app reopens on the mode you played last, so switching modes never makes you rebuild your usual setup.

If you left a puzzle unfinished, Resume Restoration picks it up exactly where you left it, even after quitting the app. (Ascent runs are timed and are not resumed.)

How to Play opens the in-app guide, and Settings opens the options.

Controls

  • Tap a tile to turn it one way. Which way is set by Settings → Rotation direction (Clockwise by default).
  • Press and hold a tile to turn it the other way. Handy when a tile sits one turn short.
  • Pinch the board to magnify it, and pan with two fingers while zoomed. One finger always turns tiles, so you can play zoomed in. When the pattern completes, the view eases back out on its own to show the whole carving.

Keyboard

Turn on Settings → Keyboard controls and a hardware keyboard works too:

  • Arrow keys: move the selected tile.
  • Space: turn it. Shift+Space: turn it the other way.
  • Return: start the next puzzle once solved.
  • Cmd+R: restart the current puzzle.

While zoomed, the view follows the selected tile as you move it.

The Four Modes

Each mode shares the same tap-to-turn control but has its own objective, material, and mood.

Loop

Carved stone. Close every strand into a loop. No loose ends may remain. Harder tiers weave several loops at once, some crossing through a shared stone.

Path

Weathered tablet. Join the anchor stones with one unbroken path. Anchors turn like any other tile. On roomy boards at the harder tiers, the thread may fork at a Y junction toward a third anchor, and the path completes only when all three ends join.

Loom

Wooden loom. Threads weave over and under on shared tiles. Turn each crossing so every thread keeps its own color end to end. Harder tiers add locked tiles that cannot be turned, so you have to work around them.

Ascent

Woven fabric. A timed run: clear boards quickly to ascend to larger ones. When the clock runs out, the run ends. See Ascent runs below.

Difficulty

Difficulty raises two things at once: how intricate the carving is, and how few moves you are given to restore it.

Tier What to expect
Novice A simple pattern, and generous moves. Room to explore and learn.
Adept A busier pattern, with a little room for missteps.
Artisan A dense pattern, more strands to close, and few moves to spare. Plan your turns.
Master The most intricate pattern, restored in the exact optimum: no room for a single wasted turn.

Harder tiers cover more of the board, add more separate strands to close, and (in the Loom) weave more crossings through each thread.

At Artisan and Master, Loop and Path also carve special stones:

  • Crossings (Loop): two loops thread through one stone. A crossing reads the same at every turn, so it never costs a move; it is a fixed feature of the carving the pattern forms around.
  • Locked stones (Loop, as the Loom has always had): bolted in place at their correct orientation. The plan routes around them.
  • Bound stones (Loop and Path): carved in twos, wearing a matching diamond rune. Turning either turns both, the same way, in one move.
  • Y junctions (Path): where the thread forks toward a third anchor. See the Path mode above.

In Ascent, difficulty works differently: it sets the pace of the countdown rather than the intricacy of the pattern. See Ascent runs.

The Move Budget

Each turn counts against your move budget. The counter at the top right shows the turns you have left.

The budget is derived from the puzzle’s own ideal solution, then widened by difficulty, so the pressure always scales with the actual board rather than with its size:

  • Novice gives a generous margin.
  • Adept leaves a little room for missteps.
  • Artisan leaves very little.
  • Master gives you exactly the optimum, turning each tile its shorter way. There is no wiggle room at all.

Run out of moves before the pattern is whole and the carving must be restored from the start. A puzzle is never generated already failed: the budget is always at least the optimum.

This move budget applies to Loop, Path, and Loom. Ascent is timed instead, against a countdown rather than a pool of moves. See Ascent runs.

Reading the Board

  • Connected strands glow. A finished pattern lights up in full.
  • Stones woven into a finished segment darken slightly, so the stones still in play stand out. Turn this off with Settings → Highlight completed strands.
  • The counter at the top right shows the turns you have left in standard modes, or the time left in Ascent.
  • Loose ends and unconnected anchors pulse gently, so your eye is drawn to what is still unfinished. Loomstone never tells you which tile to turn.

Completion Ratings

Finish and the restoration earns a rating, based on how close you came to the ideal solution. Ratings are celebratory, never punitive: every solve is at least a Restored.

Rating How you earn it
Restored The pattern is whole. Every completed puzzle earns at least this.
Elegant Restoration Restored comfortably within budget.
Masterwork Restored with barely a wasted turn.
Flawless The exact optimum. Master difficulty always demands it.

Your personal best for that mode, board, and difficulty is shown on the completion screen.

The Daily Puzzle

Each day has its own puzzle, generated from that date so every player gets the same board. Completing it extends your streak.

Today’s daily is free for everyone.

Daily archive (Full Loom)

With the Full Loom unlock you can replay the past month of dailies from the archive, each marked with a completion badge. Archive replays never touch your live streak, so going back to an old puzzle can’t break a run you are keeping.

Ascent Runs

Ascent is the long-form mastery mode, played against the clock. You climb from board to board, and each board you finish quickly enough sends you to a larger one.

An Ascent run has two selectors on the home screen:

  • The board tile chooses where you begin, from 4x4 up.
  • The flame tile chooses the pace of the countdown: Novice, Adept, Artisan, or Master. Pace sets the clock, not the pattern’s rules.
Pace The countdown
Novice Generous time to read ahead and correct a wrong turn.
Adept A steady pace with room to think, but not linger.
Artisan A brisk pace for confident, deliberate play.
Master The fastest human-viable pace. Every hesitation matters.

The counter at the top right shows the time left. Finish a board with plenty of time to spare and you climb to a larger board; a close finish keeps the next board the same size. When the clock reaches zero, the run ends.

Each board’s deadline is calculated from the board itself, its required turns and the number of tiles you have to read, so there is no bank of moves to carry from one board to the next. There is no mid-run restart, and a run is not resumed once you leave it. Your highest ascent is tracked in your statistics, separately for each pace.

Seeds

Every generated puzzle comes from a seed, and the same seed always produces exactly the same board.

  • Copy the seed from inside a puzzle to share a board with someone else.
  • Play a shared seed from Settings → Custom puzzle to enter a seed you have been given. This is a Full Loom feature.

Statistics

The statistics screen tracks your best times and completion counts per mode, board size, and difficulty, along with your highest Ascent for each pace.

You can clear it from the statistics screen. This clears every best time and count, and it cannot be undone.

Settings

Gameplay

  • Rotation direction: Clockwise or Counterclockwise. Press and hold always turns the other way.
  • Show move counter: show or hide the turns-remaining counter.
  • Show timer: show the elapsed time while you solve. Ascent always shows its countdown.
  • Confirm restart: ask before restarting a puzzle in progress.
  • Highlight completed strands: darken tiles whose segment is finished, so the tiles still in play stand out.
  • Keyboard controls: enable hardware-keyboard play.

Visual

  • Reduce motion: turns off the tile lift, the settle, and the completion glow sweep. Loomstone also follows your system Reduce Motion setting.
  • Glow intensity: Low, Medium, or High.
  • High contrast: dims the stone texture and thickens the tile outlines so the carved strands stand out.
  • Colorblind-friendly palette: retunes the thread colors to an Okabe-Ito palette that stays distinguishable for the common forms of red-green color vision deficiency. Only Loom boards weave more than one color, so this is where you will see the difference.

Audio and haptics

  • Music: on or off, with a volume slider.
  • Effects volume: the volume of the carving and completion sounds.
  • Haptics: Off, Light, Medium, or Strong.

Custom puzzle

  • Play a shared seed: enter a seed to play that exact board (Full Loom).

Help

  • How to Play: the in-app guide.
  • Replay tutorial: run the first-launch tutorial again.

In App Purchase

  • Full Loom: buy the one-time unlock.
  • Restore Purchases: re-apply a previous purchase on a new device or after reinstalling.

Free vs Full Loom

Loomstone is free to download, and the free tier is a real game rather than a demo. There are no ads, no energy timers, no consumable hints, and no interruptions.

A single one-time purchase, Full Loom, expands the game. It is not a subscription.

  Free Full Loom
Modes Loop, Path, and Loom (a selection of boards) All four, including Ascent
Board sizes A free selection per mode and tier (see below) Every size the mode supports
Difficulty All four tiers, on the free boards All four tiers, on every board
Daily puzzle Today’s puzzle Today’s puzzle plus the archive
Custom seeds Copy a seed Copy and play any seed
Statistics Full Full
Ads None None

Which boards are free

Boards run from 4x4 to 12x12 (the Loom needs room to weave, so it starts at 5x5). The 3x3 board appears only in the tutorial. Everything above 8x8 is Full Loom content; the first time you open one of those larger boards on iPhone, a one-time note teaches the pinch zoom. These combinations are free:

Mode Novice Adept Artisan Master
Loop 4x4 to 8x8 4x4 to 6x6 4x4, 5x5 5x5
Path 4x4, 5x5 4x4, 5x5 Locked 4x4
Loom 5x5 Locked Locked Locked
Ascent Locked Locked Locked Locked

Everything else, and all of Ascent, comes with the Full Loom unlock. Locked sizes and tiers still appear in the selectors with a lock, so you can always see what the full game holds.

Need Help?

Still stuck? Email nospam@edcaspersen.com.