Growing Ring Game

A ring of squares lights up one square at a time. Tap them back in the same order. Each level keeps the sequence and adds one more square to the end, and every two levels the ring itself grows and gains two squares, from 4 at the start to 14.

How to play

1. Watch the squares. Level 1 lights one square, level 2 lights that square and one more, and so on. A square can come up more than once.
2. When the lights stop, it's your turn. Tap the squares in the same order. There is no time limit for your turn.
3. Get the whole sequence right to clear the level. A wrong square shows in red, the one you should have tapped gets a dashed outline, and the same sequence plays again.
4. Before level 3, and every second level after it, the ring grows by two squares, up to 14 at level 11. The squares you had keep their order round the ring, the first at the top, and slide round to make room.

You have three lives. Each wrong square costs one, and the game ends when the last one goes. The lights get a little quicker each level.

With sound on, each square has a soft tone of its own, and the tone goes with it wherever it moves. The game is just as playable in silence.

On a keyboard, move between the squares with Tab or the arrow keys and tap one with Space or Enter. Escape pauses, and a pause during the lights plays the sequence again from the start.

Scoring

• Clearing a level scores 10 points for each one in its sequence, so level 5 is worth 50.
• The high scores show your score and the level you reached. Your five best runs are saved in this browser.
• Practice mode costs no lives and saves no scores, so you can stay on a level as long as you like.

About sequence memory

A small ring is easy to hold: four squares are top, right, bottom and left. As the ring grows, those easy names run out, and most players start counting round from the top, or seeing the sequence as a shape that jumps across the ring.

For longer sequences, a memory palace gives each item a place along a route you know, so you can walk the route to get them back in order.

Like Simon, with a Ring That Grows

Growing Ring plays like Simon, the electronic memory game with four colored buttons that Milton Bradley released in 1978. Simon lights a sequence that gets one step longer each round, and you press it back in the same order. Growing Ring starts the same way, with four squares, then adds two squares to the ring every second level, up to 14. A long sequence is harder to hold when there are more places it could go.

Simon ends at your first mistake. Here a wrong square costs one of three lives, and the same sequence plays again, so you can learn from the miss. Sequence games are one of several types of memory games.

Try Pentagon Ring, a ring that turns, Melody Lock, or play our other free memory games.