How to Play Hamlet
Hamlet is an adjacency-scoring city building puzzle. Each map gives you a grid of empty cells and a tile bag full of building types: Cottages, Fields, Mills, Wells, Chapels, Markets, Manors, and Roads. You draw a hand of up to four tiles at a time and place them one by one into empty cells. The moment a tile lands, the game scores every neighbour pair it creates — so thinking ahead about what is already on the board is the core skill.
Synergies fire immediately on placement. A Cottage placed next to a Well scores three points before your hand even refills. Place that same Cottage beside another Cottage for two more. Add a Chapel nearby and score three more points retroactively for the Cottage-Chapel adjacency the Chapel just created. Every building you place can trigger multiple synergy pairs at once, and the scoring is instant and visible — gold numbers float up from each rewarded cell.
When the tile bag empties and your hand runs out, the map ends. Your total score determines your performance band: Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Perfect. Charters — the game's meta-currency — are awarded by band and persist between all maps and sessions via localStorage. Spend Charters in the upgrade panel between maps to unlock one of three building branches: Agrarian (Granary tiles and farm-chain bonuses), Civic (Manor and Chapel prestige synergies), or Wayfinding (Road chain multipliers). Each branch has three upgrade nodes costing 60, 150 and 300 Charters. The price climbs steeply inside a branch, so opening the first node of all three costs less than driving any single branch to its top tier.
Tile Synergy Reference
- Field + Mill — +4 (grain ground nearby)
- Cottage + Well — +3 (residents near water)
- Chapel + Cottage — +3 (parish draws neighbours)
- Market + Cottage — +3 (residents need trade)
- Manor + Chapel — +4 (prestige and spiritual authority)
- Manor + Market — +3 (noble commerce hub)
- Cottage + Cottage — +2 (neighbours keep company)
- Field + Field — +2 (one continuous crop)
- Market + Field — +2 (produce straight to the stall)
- Mill + Granary — +5 (the richest pair in the game; Granary comes from the Agrarian branch)
- Granary + Field — +3 (harvest stored where it grows)
- Granary + Granary — +2 (a shared store)
- Road + any tile — +1 per pair (connectivity bonus)
- Road chain of 3+ — +6 flat when a placed Road joins a connected chain of three or more (the Wayfinding branch raises it to +9)
Controls
- Click / tap a tile in the hand row to select it
- Click / tap an empty grid cell to place it
- Hover an empty cell with a tile selected to preview the synergy score before committing
- Escape — deselect current tile without placing
- Sound toggle button in the HUD row mutes all audio effects
Strategy: Reading the Board and the Bag
Cell position is worth points before any tile is chosen. A centre cell touches four neighbours, an edge cell three, and a corner only two — so your highest-synergy buildings want to be anchors near the middle, while low-synergy filler like a lone Road can absorb a corner. Because scoring fires only for the pairs the newly placed tile creates, order matters as much as position: placing a Well between two existing Cottages pays both pairs at once, while building the Cottages after the Well pays each pair separately as it forms — the total is the same, but the second route lets you see your hand refill before committing the middle piece.
Each map's tile bag is a fixed recipe, not an endless stream, and the hand shows you four tiles of it at a time. If the bag for the map lists two Wells, the second Well in your hand is the last one coming — spend it next to the densest Cottage cluster you have. Holding a flexible tile while placing a committed one is usually right: Fields and Cottages pair with many things, Manors and Chapels pair richly but narrowly, and Roads are best saved until three of them can land as a connected chain for the flat bonus.
The Ten Maps
Hamlet's campaign runs from a 5×5 meadow to a full 8×8 township. Meadow's Edge and Mill Quarter teach the cottage-well and field-mill economies on small grids; Parish and Market Row introduce Chapels and Markets, whose synergies reward planning whole districts rather than single pairs; Manorlands and The Commons add Manors, the game's prestige anchors; Granary Vale and The Guild are broad 7×7 boards where the Agrarian and Civic branches respectively shine; Wayfarer's Way is a road-heavy 8×6 layout built around chain bonuses; and the final map, Hamlet, hands you a thirty-tile bag on the biggest grid in the game. Per-map high scores persist in your browser, so every map remains a personal-best target after the campaign ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does scoring work in Hamlet?
Every time you place a tile, Hamlet instantly scores every adjacent neighbour pair it creates. Different tile combinations yield different bonuses: a Cottage next to a Well scores +3, a Field next to a Mill scores +4, a Manor next to a Chapel scores +4. Some synergies stack — placing a Road tile next to any existing tile scores +1 per pair, and a chain of three connected Roads scores +6 total. With a tile selected, hover any empty cell to see a ghost of that tile and a preview of the synergy bonus before you commit the placement.
What are Charters and how do I spend them?
Charters are the meta-currency you earn at the end of each map based on your score band: Bronze (1), Silver (3), Gold (5), Perfect (8). They persist across all maps and are spent in the tech-tree between maps to unlock new building branches. The Agrarian branch adds Granary tiles to early bags and rewards Field clusters; the Civic branch pays +2 for every Chapel within two cells of a new Manor (and vice versa), then adds diagonal Market pairs and a Manor–Chapel–Market trio bonus; the Wayfinding branch upgrades Road pairs and multiplies Road-chain scores by 1.5×. Each branch has three nodes costing 60, 150, and 300 Charters, and the price climbs steeply inside a branch — the first node of all three branches together (180) costs less than any one branch’s top node (300).
What is the tile hand and how does it work?
At the start of each map you draw a hand of up to four tiles from the map's tile bag. Click or tap a tile in the hand row to select it (it highlights with an amber glow), then click or tap any empty grid cell to place it. After placement the hand automatically refills from the bag until the bag runs out. When both the bag and your hand are empty the map ends and your Charters payout is calculated.
Does Hamlet work on mobile?
Yes. The grid canvas scales to any screen width. On touch devices, tap a tile in the hand row to select it and tap an empty cell to place it — the same two-step gesture as on desktop. The layout responds down to 360 px wide without horizontal scrolling.
