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Road Network Puzzle is a free online connection puzzle that runs in the browser with no download and no account. Each county is a grid with a depot, a handful of villages and some water in the way. You lay road tiles by dragging across the map, and every village has to end up joined to the depot. The constraint is the tile budget: you get only about as many as a well-planned network needs, so two villages on the same side of the map must share a trunk road instead of getting a spur each. Roads cannot cross water, but they can run straight through a village and out the other side, which is usually how a tight budget is met. The budget is not a guess — each county is generated by building a network first and counting it, so the target is always achievable and the three-star line is exactly that layout. Eight counties grow from two villages on a six-by-six grid to six across a ten-by-ten with sixteen tiles of water.
How to play Road Network Puzzle
- The amber square is the depot. The small squares are villages, and they turn green once a road connects them to it.
- Drag across empty ground to lay road tiles. Drag along road you have already laid to lift it again.
- The counter at the top right is your tile budget. When it hits zero you cannot lay any more until you lift something.
- Blue tiles are water and roads cannot cross them. Plan around them before you start spending tiles.
- A road can run through a village and continue out the other side. That is the main way to serve two villages for the price of one route.
- Show wasted tiles marks any road tile that could be lifted without disconnecting anything — the spurs and the doubled-back corners.
- You win when every village is connected and you are within budget.
- Three stars means matching the best-known layout for that county exactly, with no tiles to spare.
Tips
- Find the trunk first. Look for the line that passes nearest to the most villages and build that, then branch off it.
- Order the villages by distance and serve the nearest first. Each route you build becomes something the next village can join, which is precisely where the savings are.
- Route through villages wherever the geometry allows. A road that enters one village and leaves the other side costs nothing extra and serves both.
- Corners are where tiles get wasted. Two right angles where one diagonal staircase would do is the most common way to go over budget.
- When you run out of tiles, use Show wasted tiles before lifting anything. It usually finds one or two immediately.
- Water often has a cheap side. Going the long way round a lake early is frequently less expensive than the extra corners a tight squeeze needs.
- Same County Again keeps the map so you can chase the three-star layout; New County generates a different one at the same size.
FAQ
Is Road Network Puzzle free to play?
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download, no sign-up and nothing to buy. All eight counties are included and unlock as you connect them.
Is the tile budget always enough?
Yes. Each county is generated by building a network and then counting its tiles, so the budget is that layout plus whatever slack the level allows. The target is always reachable, and on the last two counties it is exactly the reference layout.
Can a road pass through a village?
Yes, and it usually should. A village is a through-node, not a dead end, so a single route can serve several villages in a line — which is the main trick for coming in on budget.
What are the blue tiles?
Water. Roads cannot be laid on them at all, so they are what turns a straight line into a routing problem.
How is this different from the other connection puzzles here?
Path Connect joins pairs of dots with separate paths, Pipe Connect rotates fixed tiles, and Hashi counts bridges per island. Here it is one shared network and the constraint is its total size, so the puzzle is about reuse rather than about routing.
What does "wasted tiles" show me?
Every road tile that could be removed without cutting off a village. Those are the spurs and detours that are eating your budget, and they are the first thing to lift when you run short.
Do diagonals count as connected?
No. Roads join up and down and side to side only, which is why corners cost tiles and why a diagonal run is a staircase.
Does Road Network Puzzle work on a phone?
Yes. Laying road is a drag, so a whole route goes down in one stroke, and the grid is square on desktop and portrait-friendly on phones.