The Brick Builder Studio rules describe a free-form 5-by-5 construction toy with three fictional brick materials, four-layer stack limits, five 200-point activity milestones, and a local 1,200-by-900 PNG export. Every cell holds zero to four bricks and each brick wears one of three labels — Clay, Sand, or Slate — so the rules never specify a target silhouette, a permit order, a finite inventory, or a hidden solution. The score is awarded only for reaching each of the five disclosed milestones, which together cap the model at exactly 1,000 points; you can keep placing and removing bricks afterward, and Restart is the only action that returns the studio to its empty starting state. Export PNG redraws the same row, column, level, and material snapshot that the game logic uses, producing a brick-builder-studio.png file through a temporary local object URL without any network upload.
What the 5×5 Grid Allows and Disallows
The Brick Builder Studio board is a five-by-five grid of 25 independent cells, and the rules describe exactly what each cell can hold and what the session never does.
Each cell:
- Starts empty and stays editable during the entire session.
- Holds between zero and four bricks, ordered from bottom to top.
- Uses one of three fictional visual labels per brick: Clay, Sand, or Slate.
- Exposes its row, column, current height, capacity, and top material to assistive technology.
What the board never does:
- There is no required silhouette, target shape, or budget.
- There is no finite piece inventory or physics simulation.
- There is no hidden solution to find.
This is the first reason Brick Builder Studio differs from typical building puzzles: the board does not judge a layout as right or wrong. Instead, it records what you have already built and reports it back in a live status area that includes total bricks, occupied cells, tallest stack, distinct material count, earned milestones, and the running score. If a constraint feels missing, that is by design — the rules privilege free construction over a fixed target.
Materials and Stack Limits
The three materials and the four-layer limit are the two physical rules every build must respect.
The labels Clay, Sand, and Slate are visual only. They do not encode weight, density, cost, or any real material property, and the studio's documentation is explicit that they never represent real brick dimensions, structural engineering, load capacity, or construction codes. Each material label is a tag a player can switch between while editing; the studio remembers which label was used in each brick's specific position.
The four-layer rule applies per cell, not globally. You cannot stack a fifth brick on any column, regardless of how many cells remain empty elsewhere. Remove top deletes only the highest brick from the selected stack, so a four-high tower can be brought back down to three or lower before you add again. A practical consequence: the tallest-stack figure shown in the live status area can never exceed four.
Because materials are independent of height, a single column can read Clay, Clay, Sand, Slate from bottom to top — and that mix is treated exactly the same as a uniform Clay tower of the same height. The Material count display counts distinct labels used somewhere in the current model, which is what the Palette milestone ultimately checks.
The Five Milestones and the Exact 1,000-Point Cap
The score is driven entirely by five disclosed creative milestones. Each milestone is awarded once for 200 points, and every milestone ID is unique, so earning all five caps the score at exactly 1,000.
| Milestone | Threshold | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
| Groundwork | Place the first brick | The model is no longer empty |
| Footprint | 4 occupied cells | Bricks span at least four grid positions |
| Tower | 1 stack at least 3 high | A single column reaches three or more layers |
| Palette | All 3 materials used | Clay, Sand, and Slate all appear somewhere |
| Studio build | 12 bricks across 8 cells | Twelve bricks spread over eight cells |
The thresholds come directly from the product, not from a community target, and they do not depend on which cells you choose. Removing bricks can change the current model without erasing prior credit — milestones remain recorded after they are earned. The score therefore behaves more like an achievement log than a structural rating, which is why the ledger is disclosed beside the grid and not hidden behind the canvas.
Two practical consequences:
- Editing is never frozen. Adding and removing bricks after 1,000 remains available, and the score does not drift because the milestone IDs have already been persisted.
- Restart is the only action that clears the model, the selected material, every milestone, and the score, returning the studio to its deterministic empty state.
Edit a Brick Stack Step by Step
Editing any stack follows the same minimal rule set, and the controls are equal between pointer, touch, and keyboard.
- Select a cell on the free 5-by-5 grid. Pointer and touch users tap a cell; keyboard users move the cursor with the Arrow keys.
- Choose Clay, Sand, or Slate. Pointer users pick from the material selector; keyboard users press 1 for Clay, 2 for Sand, or 3 for Slate.
- Add a brick. Pointer and touch users use the explicit Add brick action; keyboard users press Enter or Space. The selected style goes on top of that stack.
- Remove the top brick. Pointer and touch users use Remove top; keyboard users press Backspace or Delete. Only the highest brick in the selected stack comes off.
- Switch cells or materials at any time. Selection, material, add, and remove are independent reducers, so changing one never accidentally places or removes another brick.
Pointer and touch users must select a cell before using add or remove, which means an existing stack can be inspected or shortened without accidentally placing a new brick first. Modified shortcuts — for example Ctrl+Enter or Shift+Space — are ignored, so the rule set you learn is the one the studio always obeys.
Pointer, Touch, and Keyboard Controls
The rules guarantee that every action has at least two equivalent paths. This makes the studio fully usable on a phone, a desktop with a mouse, or a desktop with a keyboard.
| Action | Pointer / Touch | Keyboard |
|---|---|---|
| Move selection | Tap a cell | Arrow keys |
| Add brick | Add brick button | Enter or Space |
| Remove top brick | Remove top button | Backspace or Delete |
| Choose Clay | Material selector | 1 |
| Choose Sand | Material selector | 2 |
| Choose Slate | Material selector | 3 |
| Restart | Restart button |
All action controls meet the shared touch-target size, the board uses a roving keyboard focus, and on narrow screens the board and milestone ledger stack vertically without hiding any control. Every cell exposes its row, column, height, capacity, and top material, so a screen reader can describe any stack at any time. The Boss-mode shortcut is treated as a no-op rather than an error, which means the controls never block the build for that reason alone.
What Counts Toward a Score — and What Doesn't
The Brick Builder Studio rules are unusually specific about what is measured, and this is worth stating plainly so the score never feels mysterious.
What counts:
- Each of the five milestone IDs, once. A milestone is recorded the first time the threshold is met and is not re-awarded if the threshold is met again.
- 200 points per milestone, multiplied across the five milestones, for a total of 1,000.
- The current model's totals in the live status area, which always reflect the actual brick counts on the board.
What does not count:
- A target silhouette, symmetry, or any aesthetic judgment.
- Real brick weight, density, structural engineering, or building-code compliance.
- Modified shortcuts or any input the rules do not define — these are ignored.
- A block warning, a wrong-material message, or any in-game penalty. There are none, because the studio is recreational creative software, not a design or safety tool.
If you want to take the rules further, the open Brick Builder Studio lets you build a twelve-brick model, hit every milestone, and then keep editing.
Export PNG: A Local Redraw, Not an Upload
The export rule is just as strict as the build rule, and the studio's documentation is explicit about what Export PNG does and does not do.
Export PNG:
- Creates a fresh 1,200-by-900 canvas inside the browser.
- Traverses the same row, column, level, and material snapshot used by the game logic, not an unrelated page screenshot.
- Redraws the current pure brick model onto that canvas.
- Offers the result as brick-builder-studio.png through a temporary local object URL.
Export PNG never:
- Fetches an external image or loads a remote font.
- Calls an API or uploads the model anywhere.
- Captures UI chrome, the milestone ledger, or the live status text.
Because the export uses the same tested snapshot as gameplay, the PNG you save matches the model on screen at the moment you press the button. For a walkthrough that combines rules with a first build, the open Brick Builder Studio for Beginners: Your First Build guide covers the same flow in a step-by-step format.