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▒ strategy guide · stage 20

Vector Overflow — Surviving the Densest Stage

Vector Overflow rewrites two rules at once: lines never fade, and density is the loss condition. Most players panic-tap their first run. The fix is structural, not reflex.

Vector Overflow (Stage 20) is the first stage where doing nothing isn't safe and locking everything isn't safe either. Lines you draw stay on the dish until you purge them, and the saturation meter climbs until the radar overloads. Understanding the meter is the entire stage.

Signal//Lock dish under pressure — red saturation ring around the green sweep with active vector lines
▒ Saturation ring at the edge of the dish — the bar you're managing

The saturation meter, explained

The bar at the top of the screen has four tiers:

  • Below 50% — nominal. Play normally.
  • 50–70% — caution. Stop locking opportunistically. Only take pairs that complete a color streak.
  • 70–85% — warning. The vignette tints amber. Triage: ignore single-color pairs, hunt streaks.
  • 85% + — critical. The screen pulses red. You have one or two pairs of grace before the dish overloads.

The color-streak purge

This is the single most important mechanic on this stage. When you lock three matched-color pairs in a row, the entire radar purges with an accent flash. The saturation meter drops by a meaningful chunk. Without this purge, the stage is unwinnable on a long enough timeline.

Practically: once you see a color streak counter at ×2, your only priority is finding a third pair of the same color. Skip pairs of other colors even if they're easy. A relief flash is worth more than two normal locks.

Priority hierarchy

About 28% of pairs spawn with priority markers in vector overflow. Locking them in the wrong order incurs a wrong-order penalty — extra saturation. Read the marker before you tap. If you can't see the order glyph clearly, leave the pair alone; the penalty is worse than the miss.

Common mistakes

  • Locking everything you see. Each lock leaves a line on the dish. Lines stay. You're filling the bar yourself.
  • Ignoring the streak counter. A ×2 streak is a contract — you've committed to a third pair of that color. Breaking it wastes the combo.
  • Panicking at 85%. Critical tier looks scary but gives you 1–2 free pairs before overload. One color streak from there resets the whole stage.

A clean run, in five steps

  1. Spawn at 0% saturation. Lock anything you see for the first eight seconds.
  2. At 40–50% saturation, switch to color-streak mode. Pick a color, hunt three.
  3. Trigger a purge. Saturation drops to roughly 30%. Repeat.
  4. If the meter stalls between 60–85%, hunt a streak even if it means skipping pairs.
  5. At critical, do not tap fast. Tap correctly. One streak resets the bar.

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