colonyflow Level 86

Overview

Level 86 is a Normal eight-color stage built around a colorful fan-shaped bouquet picture, with red, cyan, green, yellow, orange and pink sharing the board in roughly equal measure, plus brown, gray and tiny trace colors as accents. The tiles are stacked in layers, so the clearing follows the bouquet from the outside in: red leaves first, then green and brown, then cyan, yellow and pink, then orange, and gray finishes at the bottom. With eight colors competing for only five queue slots, disciplined queue switching is the whole challenge.

• Difficulty: Regular (Normal)
• Estimated moves: 30–40 taps

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Open with red. Red is the outermost and largest layer of the bouquet, so nothing underneath it can be carried away until it is gone. Tap the red tile and let the ants start the outer clear.
2. Move to green next. Green sits just inside the red layer, and clearing it exposes the middle of the bouquet. Keep the queue on one color at a time so the small tiles below do not get stuck.
3. Work the brown phase. Brown tiles were covered by the outer colors, so they only become reachable now. Clear brown in one continuous push.
4. Work cyan, yellow and pink next. These middle colors were covered by the brighter outer colors, so they become reachable one after another. Clear them one at a time in continuous pushes, and use the 2x speed-up button to shorten the wait.
5. Clear the trace colors (blue, black) as they are exposed. These small accents hide inside the bouquet, and the efficient play is to spend free queue slots on them immediately so they never block a slot during the main pushes.
6. Finish with orange and gray. These are the bottom layers of the picture, so they only become reachable at the very end. Sweep them in bulk; since they are the final colors, it is safe to fill the queue and let the ants finish the board. The bouquet disappears completely and the level-complete overlay with five white input slots appears.

Strategy & Reasoning

The removal order is dictated by the layer geometry: red and green cover the outer layers, cyan and yellow sit on the middle layers, and gray is the bottom layer, so the sequence red → green → brown → cyan → yellow → pink → orange → gray keeps the ants on reachable tiles. With eight colors and only five queue slots, the strategic bottleneck is queue discipline — the worst mistake is pushing two large colors at once, which leaves no room for small colors and forces waiting. The correct play is to give each main color a long uninterrupted run while using spare queue slots for the small trace colors, alternating a main color with small accents so the ants are almost never idle. Tools like Magnet and Lightning exist only to rescue a jammed queue.

Tips & Common Mistakes

• Running red and cyan at the same time jams the five slots and stalls the board. Finish one main color before starting the next.
• Ignoring the small trace colors until the queue is full leaves an unmatchable tile blocking the line. Clear every exposed accent immediately with a free slot.
• Opening a "?" tile while the queue is full can block the line. Open unknown tiles only when a queue slot is free.

Key Frames