Clear Arrows Start game

One rule that hooks you: flow, working memory and Clear Arrows

Psychology of the game

By Dirk Werner, Dipl.-Psych., Psychologischer Psychotherapeut (licensed in Germany)

Published on · Last updated on

A single rule

Clear Arrows can be explained in one sentence: an arrow can be removed when its path to the edge is clear. That is all you need to know to get started. After the first level you understand the rule; after the tenth it is in your fingers.

This simplicity is no accident. A simple rule lowers the barrier to entry, because nobody has to read a rulebook before the game begins. The depth does not come from the rule itself, but from how it combines with other conditions: with the clock, with a board that turns, with traps you cannot see, and with arrows that are hidden. This page explains why this mix is so hard to put down.

Flow: when challenge and skill match

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described a state that many people know from their own experience: you are so absorbed in an activity that time disappears, rumination stops and action seems to happen by itself. He called this state flow. One of his central observations was that flow arises especially when the demands of a task and your own abilities are well matched, and both are high rather than low.

Games that hold you keep this match going for a long time. Clear Arrows does so by raising the difficulty in stages: the clock runs from the first level, from level 11 the board turns, from level 16 traps get expensive, from level 21 the arrows are hidden. Each new condition arrives once the previous one has become familiar. That way the challenge grows with your skill instead of outpacing it.

Working memory as a bottleneck

Working memory is the part of our thinking in which we hold information for a short time and work with it. It is surprisingly small. According to current research, we can only hold a few units in it at once; a figure of about four is often cited (Cowan, 2001).

In Hidden mode, from level 21, exactly this bottleneck becomes the principle of the game. The arrows are hidden behind question marks. When you tap an arrow, you reveal the surrounding cells for two moves, after which they disappear again. The game thus shifts the load from seeing to remembering: it is no longer enough to survey the board, you have to remember what you briefly saw. If you notice this, you are experiencing your own working memory at its limit, and along the way you learn to group information into larger patterns instead of keeping track of individual arrows.

Chunking: nine cells as one pattern

A tap in Hidden mode reveals a window of three by three cells. Each cell holds an arrow pointing in one of four directions, or it is empty. Counted one by one, that is nine pieces of information, more than twice as many as working memory holds at once according to Cowan (2001). George Miller (1956) still spoke of seven, plus or minus two. But he already described how this limit can be shifted: by combining individual items into larger units. He called these units chunks. What you then remember is no longer each item, but the bundle.

What this looks like in practice was shown by William Chase and Herbert Simon (1973) with chess players. After looking at a position from a real game for a few seconds, masters could reproduce it far better than beginners. With randomly placed pieces, the advantage shrank almost to zero. So the masters did not have a bigger memory. They recognised familiar patterns and remembered the patterns instead of the individual pieces.

The window in Clear Arrows has patterns like these too. For the next move, what counts is not where each of the nine arrows points, but a smaller question: which of them point off the board or into a gap? If you work your way along the top edge, you do not remember “up, up, left, right”, but “the next two are free, the third points into the row”. That is two units instead of four. Because the windows of neighbouring taps overlap, you also do not have to read every window afresh. Part of what you have just seen is still open.

You do not have to train this bundling deliberately. It develops over time, just as it did for the chess players through the many positions they had seen. If you notice that you are reciting individual directions to yourself in Hidden mode, the patterns are not there yet. Then it helps to look specifically at the one feature that counts for the next move: does the arrow point outwards or into the row?

The shift: when a plan expires

From level 11 the board turns at a fixed rhythm. Afterwards every arrow points in a different direction, and arrows that were free a moment ago are suddenly blocked. A plan you had worked out no longer holds.

Psychologically, this is an exercise in cognitive flexibility: the ability to let go of a mental model and build a new one when the situation changes. Under time pressure this is harder than at rest, because pressure narrows your view. The bar under the score, which shows the moves left until the next turn, helps you see the change coming instead of being caught off guard by it.

Combo and immediate feedback

Flow goes hand in hand with immediate, clear feedback: you know at once whether an action was right. In Clear Arrows a removed arrow disappears instantly, and a wrong tap is shown instantly. Then there is the combo: it counts correct moves in a row and brings extra points from the start, and from level 11 also time, more the longer the streak lasts.

The combo therefore does not reward the individual result, but the flow itself. If you keep the rhythm, you are given time; if you falter, you lose it. The game makes the state Csikszentmihalyi described directly tangible, and rewards it.

When flow tips over

Flow is a narrow channel. If the challenge becomes too great, tension and eventually anxiety arise. If it is too small, boredom sets in. You experience both in Clear Arrows: the level where nothing works and the clock runs down mercilessly, and the level you have played so often that it no longer needs any attention.

The same applies to your own pace. If you push yourself too hard, you leave the channel at the top. If you notice that a level is tipping over, you can deliberately steer against it: slow down, take a break, or set yourself a new task, such as playing a familiar level for three stars.

How differently people deal with these demands is shown on the page Plan ahead or just start tapping? What happens when flow breaks off and frustration sets in is described in Giving up is not a verdict on your character.

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