Color Flood is a strategic puzzle game where your goal is to fill an entire grid with a single color in the fewest moves possible. Starting from the top-left corner, you choose colors from a palette to flood-fill your territory, absorbing adjacent cells of the chosen color. The challenge is to conquer the entire 14x14 board in 25 moves or less. Play free online at Skorven — no downloads needed.
The game starts with a 14x14 grid filled with randomly colored cells. Your "territory" begins as the single cell in the top-left corner. Each turn, you pick a color from the palette, and your entire territory changes to that color — absorbing any adjacent cells that match.
Before choosing a color, scan the board to see which color will absorb the most new cells. The best move isn't always the one that captures the most cells immediately — sometimes a smaller capture sets up a bigger one next turn.
Early in the game, focus on expanding your territory toward the center and right side of the board. The top-left start position means you need to reach the bottom-right corner, so plan your path accordingly.
With a 25-move limit on a 14x14 board, you need to average about 8 new cells per move. If you're behind that pace, look for moves that capture large connected regions.
Never pick a color that doesn't absorb any new cells — that's a wasted move. Also avoid picking the same color twice in a row, as the first pick already absorbed all adjacent cells of that color.
Color Flood is related to the mathematical concept of flood fill algorithms, used extensively in computer graphics (the "paint bucket" tool). The puzzle is actually NP-hard — meaning there's no known fast algorithm to always find the optimal solution. This makes it a genuinely challenging puzzle even for computers, let alone human players.
Color Flood is completely free to play. Browse more puzzle games on Skorven or try our Word Guess word game.
