FAQ

Pause Tiles is a meditative tile-matching game, made of hand-cut paper. No scores, no timers, no noise — a quiet game for when the world's a little too loud. It's designed for when you're overwhelmed: take a pause, then get back out there.

Yes — free to download and play, with optional in-app purchases. Available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and on Google Play for Android.

Pause Tiles is free of third-party ads, ever. It includes a few links and promos for our own website and print-on-demand shop — never anyone else's. Prefer no links at all? A one-time Ad & Web Link Removal purchase turns off every ad and outbound link, on all your devices.

A one-time purchase that turns off every ad and outbound link, on all your devices. After it, nothing in Pause Tiles leads anywhere outside the game. Without it, the app includes a few promos and links to our own website and print-on-demand shop — never anyone else's.

No data collection or tracking. There are no accounts and nothing to sign into. Our full privacy policy is at Pause Tiles Privacy Policy.

No — nothing about you leaves your device. There are no ad networks, no analytics, no accounts, and no leaderboards. The artwork and celebration animations are all included in the app itself, so it doesn't need to fetch anything while you play.

No. There are no scores, no timers, no streaks, and no leaderboards. Nothing expires, nothing resets overnight, and nothing is chasing you.

Four ways to play.

• Pause: tap matching pairs or quadruplets to clear two layers of tiles. Pause randomly selects 18 of a theme's 24 tiles, dealing 6 quadruplets and 12 pairs. There are no triplets. If you see three of the same tile, there's a fourth hiding on the lower level.
• Drift: swap tiles and line up three in a row while gravity gently shifts. You might try setting the board up so that when gravity shifts, several triplets clear at once.
• Just So: fill a grid where each tile appears exactly once in every row and column. If you get stuck, look for an empty space where the row and column crossing it already hold a wide variety of tiles.
• Piece: tap two pieces to swap places and restore a shuffled picture. For each theme, there are 24 images and 4 backgrounds, making 96 different puzzle combinations.

Every tile begins as paper. Each theme is planned, sketched, patterned, and cut from cardstock with scissors, shaped with crafting tools, then digitally photographed and processed, resulting in a hybrid paper-to-digital craft with a tactile, stop-motion aesthetic.

The free download includes Woodland Walk, a fantasy forest of sheltering trees, with cheerful chipmunks, and a sprightly red fox. More themes, like Flowers, will bloom as optional in-app purchases, each made the same slow way.

Yes — Pause Tiles has left-handed and right-handed play options, plus linen and charcoal game board backgrounds.

A mother and son. Debby creates the art; Nick builds the tech. The tech is his gift to his mother, the art is her gift to her son, and Pause Tiles is their gift to you.