Hua Rong Dao is the traditional Chinese sliding-block escape puzzle — known elsewhere as Klotski — playable free in your browser with no download and no account. A 4x5 yard holds one 2x2 general, a handful of 1x2 guards, a flat 2x1 blade and four single soldiers, with only two empty cells to work in. Every block slides in all four directions, and the only goal is to get the general down to the gate in the bottom centre. Ten positions ramp from a six-move warm-up to the traditional opening the puzzle is named for, which takes 116 single-cell moves at best. Those best-possible figures are not copied from anywhere: a breadth-first search over the whole reachable state space computes each one, and the same search powers the Hint button, so a hint is always a move on a genuinely shortest path.
How to play Hua Rong Dao
- The board is four columns wide and five rows tall. The gold 2x2 block is the general; everything else is in his way.
- Drag a block towards an empty cell to slide it. Blocks move in all four directions, one cell at a time, and a long drag keeps sliding for as far as the space allows.
- On a keyboard, tap a block to select it and then use the arrow keys.
- The dashed gate at the bottom centre is the exit. The level is done the moment the general sits on it.
- The header shows your move count next to the fewest moves the position can be solved in. Matching it is three stars.
- Undo steps back one move at a time; Restart resets the position without touching your unlocked levels.
- Hint plays one move from a shortest solution, so it never has to be undone — but any hint at all caps the level at one star.
- Ten positions unlock in order, from a six-move opener to the traditional 116-move pass.
Tips
- Work backwards from the gate. The general needs two whole columns clear beneath it, so the real question is always which two blocks have to leave the bottom rows.
- The two empty cells are the only resource in the game. Keeping them next to each other lets a 1x2 guard turn a corner; splitting them apart usually means nothing but soldiers can move.
- Soldiers are worth more as space-fillers than as obstacles. Parking one in a corner permanently is often what unlocks a whole side of the board.
- A flat blade can only leave a row by moving sideways first. If it is trapped between two guards, move a guard, not the blade.
- The general rarely travels in a straight line. In most positions it has to step sideways once to let a guard come up the other flank.
- When you are stuck, count moves rather than staring: if every block has at most one legal move, you are in a corridor and the way out is behind you — undo.
- The move counter only rewards the shortest path, so a solved-but-messy level is worth replaying. The last position is 116 moves at best, and a first solve of 200 is completely normal.
FAQ
Is Hua Rong Dao free to play?
Yes. It runs in the browser with no download, no sign-up and nothing to buy. All ten positions are included and unlock in order as you solve them.
Is this the same thing as Klotski?
Yes. Hua Rong Dao is the traditional Chinese name for the puzzle and Klotski is the name it picked up in the West. Same board, same blocks, same goal.
How is this different from the sliding puzzle already on this site?
The sliding puzzle moves numbered unit tiles into a target order — every tile is the same size. Here the blocks are four different shapes, they all move in all four directions, and the goal is one 2x2 block reaching one exit rather than an arrangement of all of them.
How is it different from the parking unblock puzzle?
In that game a vehicle only ever slides along its own axis, so a horizontal car can never move up or down. Here every block moves in all four directions, which is what makes a 4x5 board hard enough to need a hundred moves.
Where do the "fewest possible moves" numbers come from?
A breadth-first search over the whole reachable state space of each position, run as part of the test suite. Published step counts for this puzzle use several different definitions of a step — some count a slide of three cells as one move — so copying one would have been misleading. Every number shown counts single-cell moves.
Do the hints ever give a bad move?
No. Hint runs the same search from wherever you have got to and plays the first move of a shortest path, so following hints from the start finishes the level in exactly the par shown. It does cap the level at one star, which is the only cost.
Is every position actually solvable?
Yes, and that is tested rather than assumed. Five of the first ten positions drafted for this game were thrown out because the search proved the general could never reach the gate — none of them looked wrong on the board.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The board is portrait-shaped, blocks are dragged with a finger, and a single drag slides a block as far as the space allows so a long corridor is one gesture rather than six taps.