How the numbers are calculated

Since the way that the node numbers are calculated can sometimes be confusing, especially the blue and red ones, this guide will explain how they work in more detail.

Blue nodes

Let’s look at a level and see how the number on a blue node is calculated.


Let’s look at the left blue node (the one without a number), and calculate its number. As a reminder; the blue node displays the number of steps to the 2nd closest colorful node. Let’s draw out how we order the closeness of the other colorful nodes, keeping in mind the rule that the 1st/2nd/3rd/… closest can be equally close.


In the above image I have drawn out how we might order the closeness of the colorful nodes. Note that the 2nd and 3rd closest are both equally close. This order is therefore not unique; I could have swapped places of “2nd” and “3rd” in the image above, but the important part is that they would both have been the same number of steps from the blue node.


Now that we have identified the 2nd closest colorful node, we simply set the number of steps from this node to the blue node as the number on the blue node.


Note that if we had swapped the 2nd and the 3rd closest, since they’re equally close, the number on the blue would have been the same, so it doesn’t actually matter.

Red nodes

Let’s look at another level, this time looking at how we would calculate the number for a red node.



Let’s calculate what number the red node should have. As a reminder; the red node displays the number of steps to the 3rd closest colorful node. Let’s draw out how we order the closeness of the other colorful nodes, again keeping in mind the rule that the 1st/2nd/3rd/… closest can be equally close.



In the above image I have drawn out how we might order the closeness of the colorful nodes. Note that the 1st and 2nd closest are both equally close, and that the 3rd, 4th and 5th closest are all equally close. This order is therefore not unique; for example I could have swapped places of “3rd” and “4th” in the image above, but the important part is that they would both have been the same number of steps from the red node.



Now that we have identified the 3rd closest colorful node, we simply set the number of steps from this node to the red node as the number on the red node. This is how all the numbers are calculated in the game.



Here is an example of an alternative ordering: as you can see, the 3rd node is still 3 steps away from the red node, so it doesn’t really matter how we order the nodes that are equally close.