Color Tubes Strategy: Planning Pours Within the Move Budget

Updated October 2026

In Color Tubes you pour coloured layers between tubes until every tube holds a single colour. Solving a level is rarely the hard part early on; solving it within the move counter is what ends runs later. The budget for each level is calculated from the puzzle you were dealt, and it shrinks as you climb; each level also runs against a clock that gets shorter every level, so the skills that matter most are efficiency and speed. This guide explains how the levels and the budget are built, what counts as a move, and the habits that save pours.

What a level looks like

Every tube holds four layers. Each level deals the colours at random into full tubes and adds two empty tubes on the end. The number of colours rises through the opening levels and then holds steady:

• Level 1: three colours, five tubes in total.
• Levels 2 to 5: one more colour each time, from four up to seven.
• Level 6 onward: eight colours in ten tubes, laid out as two rows of five.

The eight colours are red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, cyan and pink. A level counts as cleared the moment every tube is either empty or holds four layers of one colour, and that check happens before the move counter is looked at, so a final pour that finishes the puzzle always counts even if it uses your last move.

What one move actually is

Tap a tube to lift it; it rises a little and its outline turns yellow. Tap a second tube to pour. The pour is legal only if the destination is empty or its top layer matches the colour on top of the source. When it is legal, the whole block of matching layers on top of the source moves together, as far as there is room. If the destination only has space for one layer, one layer moves and the rest stays behind. Either way it costs exactly one move.

An illegal pour costs nothing: the selection simply clears. Tapping the lifted tube again, or tapping an empty part of the board, also cancels without a charge. The only thing that spends your budget is a pour that actually moves liquid. That makes partial pours the main hidden cost in the game, because splitting a block of three into two pours spends two moves where one would have done if you had cleared space first.

How the move budget is set

Before a level starts, the game solves it. Its built-in solver tries forty randomised quick searches, keeps the shortest solution it finds, and falls back to a full breadth-first search only if those all fail. Your budget is the length of that solution plus a slack allowance that depends on the level: twenty spare moves at level 1, then shrinking by roughly six moves every ten levels. At level 10 the slack is 14, at level 20 it is 8, at level 30 it is 2, and from level 34 on there is no slack at all, so you must match the solver's solution or beat it.

On top of the move budget, every level has a time limit shown in the TIME counter: 90 seconds minus 1.5 seconds per level, so 88.5 seconds at level 1, 75 at level 10, 60 at level 20 and 45 at level 30. It has no floor; at level 60 it reaches zero, which means no run can clear more than 59 levels. The clock runs on real time, so leaving the tab or locking the screen does not pause it. On level 1 it starts with your first tap; from level 2 onward it starts as soon as the new board appears.

Two consequences are useful. First, every level you are given is solvable within its budget, because the game only hands out deals it has solved. Second, the solver is not perfect. In our simulation, which generated 60 deals at each of the first four levels and compared the solver's answer with a true shortest solution, the solver's solution was on average about half a move longer than necessary at level 1 and more than a move longer at level 4. In other words, a careful player can usually find a solution a little shorter than the one the budget was built from, which is the margin you live on once the slack is gone.

Also in our simulation, across a few dozen eight-colour deals, the solver's solutions ranged from about 22 to 32 moves with a typical value of 26. With slack added, an eight-colour level around level 6 gives you a budget in the low-to-mid forties; by level 30 it is closer to the high twenties.

The counter shows how many moves remain and turns to a warning colour when three or fewer are left. If you run it down to zero without clearing, the run ends.

Opening a level

Resist the urge to pour immediately. Spend a few seconds looking at the top layer of every tube and asking two questions: which tops already match each other, and which tube is closest to being a single colour already? A tube whose lower layers are already one colour is valuable: once the layer covering them is moved away, matching pours onto it finish a tube for good.

• Pour onto matches before using an empty tube. A pour onto a matching top consolidates and frees space at the same time. A pour into an empty tube only relocates.
• Prefer pours that move a whole block. Moving three layers in one pour is three times as efficient as moving one.
• Uncover before you collect. If a colour you want is buried one layer down in two tubes, first spend one move removing the cover from the tube where the result will be most useful.

Using the two empty tubes well

The two empties are the only places you can put a colour that has no matching partner yet, so they are your working space. Each time you fill one with a mixed stack, you lose that space until you spend more pours to empty it again. A good rule is to give each empty tube a single job: dedicate it to one colour and only ever add that colour to it. A spare that slowly becomes a complete tube is ideal, because a finished tube no longer needs any moves.

Late in a level you will often find two tubes containing the same two colours in alternating layers. Untangling them needs a holding place for one of the colours. If both spares are full by then, you may need several extra pours to create space, and on a tight budget that is where runs end. Keep one spare clear for as long as you can.

Counting moves on tight levels

Once the slack is in single figures, treat the counter as part of the puzzle. Before each pour, check whether it achieves one of three things: completes a tube, empties a tube, or merges two blocks of the same colour. A pour that does none of these is purely a relocation and should be rare. When you are about to make a relocation, ask whether a different order would let that colour go straight to its final home a move or two later instead.

Another useful habit is to pour the colour that appears most often on tops first. Clearing a widely shared colour tends to uncover several different layers at once, which opens more options for the next few moves than clearing a colour that is buried.

Restarting and scoring

The restart button beside the counters puts the same puzzle back exactly as it was dealt, with the full move budget for that level, and your score stays as it is. It does not deal a new puzzle and it does not stop or reset the clock, so a restart buys moves but never time. It is only available while you are playing, not during the short cleared animation and not after the run is over. If you can see early that a deal has gone badly, for example both spares filled with mixed colours and only a few moves left, restarting at once is often better than fighting on; restarting late in a short level usually leaves too little time for the second attempt.

Clearing level 1 is worth 100 points, and each level after that is worth 50 more than the one before: 150 for level 2, 200 for level 3, and so on. The total after ten cleared levels is 3,250. Because later levels pay much more, a run that reaches level 25 is worth far more than several short runs. Your best score is stored on the device, and if it is above zero you can submit it to the Hall of Fame from the final card.