Sort the Glow guide: how pouring works, what par means, and when to add a jar

Sort the Glow is a ball-sort puzzle dressed as alchemy. You pour glowing orbs between glass jars until every jar holds a single colour, and every level you clear brews a potion. There is nothing to hurry and nothing to lose, which makes it a good first puzzle game — but the rules have a few edges that new players trip over, and those edges are what this guide is about.

Sort the GlowPour glowing orbs between jars until each holds one colour, across 100 calm levels that each brew a potion.Play free in your browser →

What you are actually doing

Jars sit on a shelf and hold up to four orbs each. Orbs stack from the bottom up, and you always work from the top of a jar. A level is solved when every jar is either empty or holds exactly four orbs of one colour; those jars get a cork and start to glow.

You win or lose by the pour, so it is worth being precise about it:

• Tap a jar, then tap another jar to pour. Tap the same jar again to cancel.
• A pour is only legal if the destination is empty or its top orb is the same colour as the source's top orb.
• A pour moves the whole run of same-coloured orbs sitting on top of the source — but only as many as fit, so a four-orb run poured into a jar with three orbs already in it moves exactly one.
• You cannot pour into a full jar, and you cannot pour from a jar that is already finished (four of one colour). Tapping a finished jar just shakes it.

What par means, and how stars work

Every level ships with a number called par. It is the move count a solver found when the level was built, and the game uses it for one thing: your star rating.

• 3 stars — you finished at or under par and never used + Jar.
• 2 stars — you finished within 1.35 times par.
• 1 star — anything longer.

The par shown after a win is that stored number, so when you clear a level in fewer moves than par, you have found a genuinely shorter solution than the one the generator used. Par is not a move limit; there is no limit at all.

Par rises steeply across the game, from 3 moves in level 1 to 42 in level 100, with the hardest single level in the set needing 67. That spread is the real difficulty curve — not the number of colours. Every shipped layout was checked by the same solver that produced its par, so all 100 of them are solvable.

How the 100 levels scale

Colours step up every seven levels or so: 2 colours at level 1, 3 at level 2, 4 at level 4, 5 at level 11, and 10 from level 46 onward. Two empty jars are always on the board at the start.

One detail worth knowing: in the later chapters some jars begin holding more than four orbs. A jar only counts as finished at exactly four, so an overfull jar has to be poured down into two destinations before you move on. Pouring out of one is always legal — you just cannot pour into a full jar.

Where new players get stuck

Mistaking "no useful pour" for a dead level. The game has no fail state. When the only legal moves left are shuffling a full jar into an empty one, it shows a message and the level is still open. That is your cue to Undo, Restart, or add a jar.

Filling empty jars too early. Dumping a run of orbs into an empty jar "to get it out of the way" burns one of your two free spaces and often creates a second half-full jar you now have to merge. A pour onto an empty jar should be a deliberate parking move, not a default.

Splitting a run to save a move. Pouring three orbs somewhere and one elsewhere is two moves to do what one pour would do. Check whether the whole run fits before you start.

Ignoring which colour you finish first. The first three colours you complete become the potion recipe for that level, and the order changes the potion. If you are collecting them for the Potion Book, finishing order matters to you even though it does not matter to the board.

Tricks that follow from the rules

• Work a colour to exhaustion. Every orb of a colour is interchangeable, so once a jar holds a run of one colour, keep feeding that colour into it until it corks. A corked jar is out of the game and gives you back a workspace slot.
• Count free slots, not free jars. Two empty jars plus the room inside partly-filled jars is your real budget. Running out of legal destinations is what creates a jam, not running out of moves.
• Undo before you Restart. Restart throws away everything including the moves you did not regret; Undo only rewinds one pour, and it does not touch the move counter.
• Save + Jar for the last two jars of a colour. Adding a jar is your escape hatch, and its only cost is the third star. If you are chasing stars on a board you have already solved, keep it in reserve until you are certain.
• Chapters alternate two music tracks and the palette stays calm, so there is no difficulty spike hidden in presentation — everything hard about level 70 is the number of moves in front of you.

Progress, potions and languages

Your cleared levels, best star counts and potion book are kept in your browser; after each level clear the platform syncs that save to your Glowbox account. The Potion Book has three tabs: yours, the most brewed by players elsewhere, and the newest. The world-wide tabs need a connection.

Seven languages are available (English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French); the game picks one from your browser and you can switch it yourself.

If you only remember three things

1. Pour only onto an empty jar or the same colour, and take the whole top run when it fits.
2. A jar is finished at exactly four orbs of one colour — never pour out of a corked jar.
3. Undo is free, Restart is not, and + Jar always caps you at two stars.