Feeding Om Nom: Cut the Rope tips and hints

Chillingo’s latest blockbuster release Cut the Rope has shot up the charts, thanks to a combination of a charming art style, brilliant puzzles, and Angry Birds obsessives needing their next 59p fix.

The game tasks you with rescuing a sweet from its ropey shackles and guiding it carefully into a green monster’s gob. It’s smart, tricky, and will catch you out more than once in the app’s 100 levels.

To help you through, we’ve put together this Cut the Rope tips and hints guide which should enable you to get to grips with the game’s basic elements, unlock those ever-so-important Game Center achievements, and even get three stars in each stage with some handy videos.

Like the game itself, our Cut the Rope guide is not a finished entity. We’ll update it as new levels are added. Let us know in the comments where you get stuck and we’ll try and help you out.

Your objective is to get the sweet into the green monster’s mouth. In each stage, the candy will begin attached to one or more ropes, and you have to slice these ropes carefully so the sweet will drop onto the monster.

To get a higher score and unlock levels faster, you’ll also want to get stars. Each stage has three stars to get, meaning you can cruise through by simply delivering the sweet to its hungry destination, or make life tougher (and more fun) by getting stars along the way. To get a star, just hit one with the sweet.

The star icons up top show you exactly how many stars you’ve found so far in that stage. You’ll need to get the stars in one go, though: you can’t get two and then come back later to get the third.

There’s also the 'restart' icon (the circular arrow): a great way to get back to square one quickly if you’re about to fail, you’ve lost momentum in your swing, a star has disappeared, or you’ve cut the wrong rope.

As you head through the game, you’ll be introduced to new concepts, obstacles, enemies, and toys. Here’s how they work, and some tips to get the better of them.

Rope slicing

A concept so integral to the game that they put it the name, cutting ropes is something you’ll be doing on every single stage.

Simply slide your pinky across the string to slash it, making the candy drop (if it’s only attached to one rope) or swing in a different direction (if it’s dangling on multiple ropes).

Multi-slicing

Sometimes, you’ll be better off slicing more than one rope at once. You can either make one long slice in a continuous motion, hack away at different ropes separately, or use the magic of multi-touch to cut two ropes simultaneously with two different fingers.

Stretched ropes

If a rope is red, it means the string is stretched to its limits and slicing it will cause the candy to fly in the opposite direction.

This is useful for catapulting the sweet at a hard to reach star, but it can make the sweet unpredictable and hard to control until it settles. Look out for nearby obstacles and slice accordingly.

Obstacle: Spikes!

The first obstacle you’ll meet is the common spike. These lines of knives mean instant Game Over if your candy hits them as the fragile sweet will shatter into pieces upon impact.

They must be carefully navigated and avoided at all costs. Thankfully, although physically impossible, a rope can pass through spikes at no cost.

Automatic ropes

Seen a peg outlined with a dotted blue line? That means a rope will instantly attach between the peg and sweet if your delicate candy piece passes through the blue line. They can only be used once, so plan your actions before slicing manically.

You’ll also have to pay attention to momentum: if the sweet drops from directly above it will drop like lead and swing uselessly at the bottom. Make it drop from the side, and your sweet will swing side to side like a pendulum, allowing you to collect stars and exit at a more useful angle.

Bubbles

Drop a sweety in a bubble and the watery sphere will make your candy float upwards. It can still be attached to a rope - it will just naturally glide to directly above a peg, instead of directly below it.

To release the sweet simply tap the bubble and it will burst, sending your delicious treat plummeting to the ground. Watch out for spikes as bubbles float up, and ensure your candy doesn’t float off the top of the screen.

Air cushions

These sellotaped bellows send a blast of air which makes your candy move. They’re much more effective against bubbles, sending floating watery circles flying across the screen.

Pay close attention to exactly how many taps it will take to manoeuvre a bubble to the right place. You’ll often find that you just need to give an air cushion a single or double tap, instead of a mad barrage of touches, to send a bubble into the right path.

They can also be used to get sedentary roped-sweets swinging again, but be judicious in your blows or you’ll have a tough time getting the rope to go straight again.

Obstacle: Spiders!

These eight legged nuisances are a pain in the neck. They hang out on pegs, waiting for a rope to appear. Once it does, the arachnid dances down the string, slowly, until he reaches the sweet. If you don’t release the sweet before he gets there, the icky insect will steal your candy - Game Over.

Still, he can be quite a slow poke, so take your time and get it right - slashing ropes and blowing air cushions carefully and properly - instead of acting wildly and repeatedly messing up.

These spiders will keep you on your toes, but that's no reason to throw the level because of your arachnophobia.

Timed stars

Cut the Rope isn’t a particularly time sensitive game. You can get a better score by acting fast, but you can usually take your time and still complete the entire game.

Not so with these guys. See a star with a coloured rings that's slowly depleting - like a timer? Once the yellow clock drops to 0, the star will disappear and you you’ll have to restart to get it. Bummer.

Like spiders, they’ll keep you on your toes, but you’ll still need to play smartly and judiciously to avoid obstacles.

Moveable hooks

These handy pegs are on a slider, allowing you to grab hold of the hook with your finger and move it across the level.

You can go as slowly or as quickly as you like, but going really fast can send the candy into a fast dash - unpredictable and tough, but a necessity for levels with extremely tight sections.

If the candy is attached to more than one peg, and some of those hooks are movable, you can turn the ropes into red, stretched elastic and fire the candy into a certain direction.

Obstacle: Sparks!

Exactly like spikes except they flicker on and off, allowing you to pass through if you have good timing. Keep your eye on how fast they’re off, and on, for before making the leap of faith.

Rotatable hooks

As with movable hooks, you grab a hold of this peg with your finger. But instead of moving, you twist, rotating your pinky in a circular motion to either lengthen or shorten the rope. This allows you to get the candy in a very specific location.

Cut the Rope’s Game Center and Crystal achievements are mostly self explanatory, with all 14 awards easy to understand and, for the most part, unlock.

You’ll get achievements for getting the game’s stars (at increments of 50, 150, and 300) and completing the levels (Cardboard Box, Fabric Box, Foil Box and Gift Box, which have 25 stages each).

As you go through the game, you’ll likely come across achievements for cutting 100 and 800 ropes, popping 50 bubbles, “outsmarting” 40 spiders (simply cutting a rope they’re on before they get to the sweet), and losing the candy 50 times (either by breaking it or losing it off screen).

And finally there’s the Quick and Master Finger achievements. These are for cutting loads of ropes in one go.

The easiest stage to get this is World 1 (Cardboard Box), Level 7. Here, the candy is attached by six ropes at the start. Put all your pinkies on the screen at once, and slash away, easily netting you awards for slicing three and five ropes at once.

And finally, three star solutions for the game’s 100 levels. Instead of painstakingly describing each solution in text (not useful for you, not great for my mental state), we found some brilliant videos by the magnificent YouTube user SnorkReviews.

The handy videos give you a no-nonsense guide to getting three stars on every level, so just follow what Snork does and you’ll beat it in no time.

However, if you’re still stuck, let us know what level is kicking your arse in the comments and we’ll give you a complete how-to for that stage in a later update to the guide.