Blood Links

Blood Links is a daily path-finding puzzle for people who know how the Demon Slayer cast fits together. You are given a start character and a target character, and your job is to travel from one to the other by hopping along real relationships: family ties, masters and pupils, teammates, rivals and allies. It is a little like six degrees of separation, set inside Kimetsu no Yaiba.

The game works on a hand-built map of relationships covering the main slayers, Hashira, demons and supporting cast. Each day's pair is chosen so that the shortest route is between three and five steps, which means there is always a clever path, but rarely an obvious one.

At the top you see the start and the target, along with the Par, the fewest steps it can be done in. Below, the character you are currently on shows their connections as tappable cards, each tagged with the kind of link: Family, Mentor, Teammate, Rival or Ally. Tap one to travel there; every tap is one step.

Only the first four connections are shown up front. If a character has more, a search box lets you type a name to find the rest, so knowing who is linked to whom really matters. Took a wrong turn? Undo removes your last step with no penalty, and your route so far is always shown.

Reach the target in Par steps to earn three stars, within two steps of Par for two stars, and any longer route earns one star. If you are stuck, Give up reveals one of the shortest routes. The pair changes at midnight UTC, solving it keeps your daily streak alive, and signed-in players who reach the target are ranked by fewest steps, with the fastest time breaking ties.

Aim for hubs. Characters with many relationships, like Tanjiro Kamado or Muzan Kibutsuji, connect to large parts of the map, so reaching one early often opens a short path to almost anyone. Tanjiro links to his family, his squad, his teachers and the demons he fought, while Muzan ties together the whole of the Twelve Kizuki.

Work backwards from the target. Ask who the target is directly linked to: their family, the Hashira who trained them, the demon they faced. If the target is Zenitsu, for instance, think of his master Jigoro Kuwajima and his rival and fellow pupil Kaigaku, then find the quickest way to reach one of them.

Use the relationship types as a guide. Mentor links jump across generations, such as from a Hashira to the retired slayer who trained them, while Rival links are the bridge between slayers and demons. Undo is free, so explore and backtrack.