colonyflow Level 142

Overview

Level 142 is a Regular five-color stage whose picture is a chunky pixel-art star, filled mostly with yellow tiles and wrapped in a red outline, with small pink star accents and a few cyan and brown highlight tiles along the edges. The tiles are stacked in layers, so the clearing order follows the picture from the outside in: yellow leaves first as the largest body layer, then the red outline and the small gray, orange and pink accents are exposed and cleared toward the end. The main challenge is simply queue discipline — yellow is by far the biggest color, so after tapping it you should use the free slots to chip away the small accent colors instead of letting the ants sit idle.

• Difficulty: Regular (Normal)
• Estimated moves: 25–35 taps

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Tap yellow first. Yellow makes up more than half of the picture (the whole star body), and the ants cannot reach the outline colors beneath until the big yellow region is carried away. Keep tapping yellow in connected patches and let the ants run; turn on the 2x speed-up button to shorten this long first stretch.
2. Move to red next. Red forms the star's outline, which was partially covered by yellow; once yellow drops, the red outline becomes reachable. Clear the red outline in a continuous sweep so the ants stay on one color.
3. Now tap gray. Gray is a small accent color sitting on the middle layers; it clears quickly, and doing it right after red exposes the inner detail without occupying a queue slot for long.
4. Tap orange next. Orange is another small middle-layer color; sweep it together with the remaining small tiles so the picture thins out toward the bottom layer.
5. Finish with pink. Pink is the bottom accent layer (the tiny corner stars and highlights), so it is the last color to be exposed. Sweep it in bulk at the very end; with only small tiles left, you can fill the queue safely to speed up the finish.
6. Use spare queue slots on the trace colors (cyan, brown) whenever they become visible. These tiny tiles clear in one tap and must not be left behind, or they will block a slot at the end.
7. A tile marked with a "?" hides its count until tapped — open it only when a queue slot is free, so an unknown color never jams the line. If the queue does jam, use the Magnet tool to pull the offending color, or the Lightning tool to clear a small cluster, and keep the Eraser for a single stuck tile.

Strategy & Reasoning

The level follows the layered-stacking rule: a color that covers others must be carried away first, and the removal order measured in the solution video is yellow, red, gray, orange, pink, which matches the geometry of the star. Clearing yellow before everything else matters because it is the thick top layer; tapping the outline colors early would waste ants on tiles that are still covered. The queue is the only real bottleneck, and with five colors competing for five slots the worst mistake is starting two small colors at once and getting stuck. The efficient play is to pair the long yellow carry with quick trace colors, so the ants are almost never idle and a free slot is always ready for the next exposed tile. Tools like Magnet and Lightning are rescue-only — using them preemptively is slower than finishing one color before starting the next. Because the yellow stretch is the longest idle period in the level, keep the speed-up button active throughout it.

Tips & Common Mistakes

• Tapping red or pink before yellow is gone wastes ants on covered tiles. Clear the big yellow body first, then work the outline.
• Filling all five queue slots with one color leaves no room for the small trace tiles, which then stall the board. Push one large color and use spare slots for cyan and brown.
• Ignoring the "?" tiles until the queue is full leaves you with an unknown color that may not be removable. Open a "?" tile only when a slot is free.

Key Frames