Goparokko is a simple game consisting of a bunch of coloured tiles which need to be cleared in groups of 4 (or 6, or even 8!). You do this by rotating the tiles in a 4×4 square, using the mouse.
The important thing to notice here is that you can ONLY ROTATE THE TILES CLOCKWISE. The direction of rotation plays a big part towards the strategy of this game so it’s important to get used to this!
There are also some special tiles, most of which are good. From left to right:
- Dynamite: Explodes all boxes of the same colour, excluding other special tiles (this doesn’t explode locked tiles, extra time tiles or score multiplier tiles)
- Next Tile Colour: Once this tile is removed, the tile which replaces it will be the middle colour
- Locked Tile: Tile is locked in place and won’t move – if you try and rotate an area of the board which includes this tile, you won’t be able to!
- Rainbow Tile: Matches with any colour tile on the board
- Hourglass: Gives you more time!
- Score Multiplier: Multiplies your clearance score by the number on the box (x2 or x4)
playing the game
Upon loading the game I suggest you turn sound and music off – they get irritating after a while! Click ‘start’ and then chose easy mode. Playing in hard mode gives you more points-per-match, but the timer runs down much more quickly! I don’t find the increase in points makes up for the increase in speed.
The main game strategy (fairly obviously) is to make as many matches (squares of the same colour) as you can in the time given. This means you should only be using 1-3 clicks of the mouse to make your matches the majority of the time. Doing this also means you can be more leisurely with your rate of clicking, and allows you more time to look for the next match.
The only time you should not keep the clicks to a minimum is when matching locked tiles – then it’s more important to get rid of them any way possible, instead of waiting until you can free them in one move.
The timer continuously decreases until you match a set of tiles, and then more time is added (and matching an Hourglass tile gives you even more extra time!). Every time you click to rotate a set of tiles, the timer pauses momentarily. If you’re ever running low on time (because you’ve spent too long getting rid of locked tiles, for example) and there are no hourglasses on the board, try to quickly “top up” the timer by making several 1 or 2-click matches in a row, before resuming your normal rate of play
making fast matches
As I said earlier, you can only rotate tiles in a clockwise direction. That is, tiles in the bottom left corner go up, tiles in the top right corner go down.
This means that it’s easier to move tiles in certain directions, and you need to keep this in mind when making fast matches!
Below I’ve listed the situations which will come up where you can make matches in only 1 or 2 clicks.
ONE-CLICK MATCHES
One-click matches are your friend when time is running short! There are 8 orientations which allow you to make a match in 1 click. I have shown these in the diagram below:
An example of these in-game would be:
& 
You may have noticed that there are only two different set-ups which will make a one-click match – the others are just 90-degree rotations of these two! Once you’ve got an idea of what shapes you’re looking for, it should become easy to spot the one-click matches amongst the tiles.
TWO-CLICK MATCHES
There are a lot of ways to make a match in two clicks! The first click forms the one-click pattern, and the second click completes the match. The diagrams are below:
These two can be done in either order!
I’ve not made the rotated versions of the next few, but the same principles apply!
Don’t be afraid to move tiles out of the way in order to make a match! In the example below, it’s possible to complete the square in either two or three moves:
There are more ways than this to go about making matches, and I’ve not even touched on all the 3-click moves! However, once you get a hang of the moves I’ve shown, and get used to the direction of rotation, you should find it becomes natural to just know which tiles are the easiest to put into position. Then you can concentrate on getting those matches in thick and fast!
other tips
- Goparokko is not a fast game. If I’m playing for a trophy, I can be playing for a good 30-45 minutes (or longer!). Make sure you’ve got enough time to play (and a good soundtrack to keep you motivated!) – there’s no pause button!
- Throughout the game, and especially as the levels progress, DO NOT WATCH THE TIMER. Watching/looking at the timer will do nothing but panic you, and when you’re panicked, matching tiles suddenly becomes a whole lot more difficult!
- Try and clear locked tiles quickly, as if you leave them you can get several locked tiles next to each other, locking up a large proportion of your playing space.
- You can gain more points by using the ‘next colour’ tiles. If you’re careful, you can maneuver the tiles so that when you make a match, the ‘next colour’ tile completes a second match. HOWEVER I’d only ever bother doing this in the early stages of the game where time is not an issue! Generally I find this too much of a hassle to bother with.
- Dynamite boxes are great, but be wary of using dynamite which is the same colour as a locked tile. If you get rid of all of the tiles, there’s nothing around to get rid of the locked tile with!
- In early rounds when you still have time, try to match dynamite boxes with multiplier tiles for even more points! (Multiplier tiles won’t usually explode with dynamite, you have to make the match with both a multiplier tile and a dynamite tile)
- Don’t hesitate! If you start a move and then realise you should have done something differently, just keep going! Time is short, and you’ll only get more by making more matches! The same goes for if you accidentally click in the wrong place (happens to me far more than I’d like!) – just carry on instead of trying to correct your mistake
- Try to play this game with a mouse! Playing with a laptop touchpad is not recommended: I find I can only get to ~10,000 points on my laptop (compared to 20,000+ when I use a computer with a mouse!)