GNOME.org

Lights Off Manual

1. Introduction

Lights Off is a puzzle game, where the objective is to turn off all of the tiles on the board. Each click toggles the state of the clicked tile and its non-diagonal neighbors.

To run Lights Off, select Applications ▸ Games ▸ Lights Off, or type lightsoff in the command line.

Lights Off is included in the gnome-games package, which is part of the GNOME desktop environment. This document describes version 1.0 of Lights Off.

2. Playing Lights Off

You progress through the levels either by turning off all of the tiles in a particular level, or using the arrow-shaped buttons near the bottom of the game. These buttons allow you to skip levels, or return to previous levels, without restriction.

2.1.  Manipulating the Board

There is only one action available in Lights Off: clicking a tile on the board. You can either click on the tile with the mouse, or use the arrow keys to choose it. The first time you press an arrow key during a game of Lights Off, a cursor will appear, which you can move with the keyboard; pressing enter will click the light below the cursor.

When a tile is clicked, both it and all of its non-diagonal neighbors will toggle their state. The objective is to turn all of the tiles on the board off.

2.2. Starting a New Game

To begin a new game, go to Game ▸ New Game. The progression of levels will be the same between games and between computers, so New Game should only be chosen if you actually want to return to the beginning of the game.

3. Customizing Lights Off

3.1. Customizing the Look of Lights Off

Under Game ▸ Preferences, you can customize the look of the tiles in Lights Off. There are a variety of styles included, some of which make use of the color of your theme. This can be disabled with the Use colors from GNOME Theme option in the Preferences window.

4. Authors

Lights Off was written by Tim Horton in 2009 and maintained by the Gnome Games Team since then. This manual was written by Tim Horton. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, follow the directions in this document.

5. License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330 Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

  • Lights Off Manual