What Is Stargazer?
Stargazer is played on a square grid dotted with arrow cells. Each arrow points in one of eight directions, the four straight ones and the four diagonals, and its ray runs from its own cell all the way to the edge of the grid. You place stars in the empty cells so four rules hold at once: an arrow cell never holds a star, each arrow points at exactly one star, each star is pointed at by exactly one arrow, and the numbers outside the grid are the exact star counts for their row or column.
Two things surprise players coming from Star Battle or Star Circle. Stars may touch, side by side or corner to corner, because Stargazer has no adjacency rule. And a ray passes straight over any arrow in its path and keeps going, so nothing ever blocks an arrow's sight. The puzzle is known generically as Stars and Arrows, and in German collections as Sternenhimmel.
How to Solve It
The opening move is a coverage pass. Count how many rays cross each cell. A cell no ray reaches can never hold a star, because no arrow would be pointing at it. A cell two or more rays reach can never hold a star either, because two arrows would be claiming the same one. Only cells with exactly one ray are candidates, and each belongs to a single arrow. On a hard grid that one pass clears most of the board before you place anything.
From there the board opens up through counting. An arrow down to one candidate has found its star. A line whose number equals the candidates left in it is entirely stars, and a line that has hit its number excludes everything still open in it. Alternating between those two readings finishes most easy boards.
Hard boards ask for confinement. When an arrow's surviving candidates all sit in one row, that arrow must spend its star inside that row even though you cannot yet say where. Two arrows confined to a row whose number is two account for the whole row, so every other arrow's candidate there is out. The general form is a matching argument over sets of arrows and the lines they can reach, and it is the technique that separates a hard grid from a medium one.
Tapping an arrow traces its ray so you can read the cells it touches, and tapping again clears the trace. Tracing submits no move. Every star lies on exactly one arrow's ray, so a traced line never shows you a star belonging to somebody else, which makes the highlight safe to trust.
Why We Built It
Most of our grid puzzles ask you to reason about neighbourhoods. Stargazer asks you to reason about lines of sight that cross the entire board, and a single arrow at one corner can decide a cell at the other. The coverage rule is unusually satisfying to run, because it converts a wide open grid into a small, private candidate set for each arrow in a few minutes of honest work, and everything after that is pure bookkeeping and matching.
It also pairs well with the star puzzles already in the catalog while playing nothing like them. Dropping the adjacency rule takes away the habit those games build and replaces it with counting, which makes Stargazer feel fresh even to players who have solved hundreds of Star Battle boards.
The interface uses a three-state cell. Tap to cycle blank, star, excluded, and back to blank. The excluded mark is an optional solving note, and blank and excluded both count as empty when the board is graded, so you can lean on it during the coverage pass without any risk.
Launch Details
Stargazer launches with three difficulties: 6x6 easy boards, 8x8 medium, and 10x10 hard. Every puzzle is generated and verified to have exactly one solution reachable by logic alone, and the harder bands are additionally graded on how much advanced work they demand, so a board that happens to fall to simple counting does not get labelled hard.
Solving is check-only. Nothing is flagged while you play, there is no mistake limit, and pressing Check tests the whole board at once. A failed check reveals no cells, costs nothing, and leaves the attempt running. Keyboard controls are there too: arrow keys to move, S for a star, X to exclude, Enter to cycle, Backspace or Delete or 0 to clear, Z to undo, Shift+Z to redo, and space to pause.
Stargazer is launching in beta. The rules and your saved progress are stable, and the presentation may still improve while we watch how the boards play. Leaderboards and personal bests are tracked from day one.