about credits hints index rules
Your mission is to try and get to the next level until you've reached the end of the game. At the moment the end is only a temporary end, so if you've already got that far, all you can do is wait for the new levels to come.
The game basics are mainly covered in the tutorial levels (the hints section helps if you are on one of the eleven first levels).
As the intention of this game is to be aside from difficult also somewhat fair, there are certain rules on e.g. how to enter an answer to the game once you've found one and so on.
First of all, all the answers aren't actually words but they do have a meaning and hence aren't just random letter-number combinations.
Everything on a level counts as a hint. This means that there is a chance of you misinterpreting one of our hints as some of them just don't happen to carry as much weight as the others.
A basic way to get from the level n to the level n + 1 is to alter the address of the level n in some way. Even more often this leads you to more hints or even occasional "easter eggs". Feel free to experiment — URL changing is more than just entering "what you see dot html" there.
The URLs contain no spaces and are all-lowercase — unless a hint clearly tells you to do otherwise.
All usernames and passwords are written in lowercase.
In the early levels you can clearly tell whether a level is passworded or not as the levels that require a username and a password always include a clear link to the next level. Usernames and passwords on a certain level are, in most cases, hidden in a similar way.
The levels with a link to Google may require the use of external sources of information. As Google happens to be our favourite search engine at the moment, we gave you the link to it but you can of course use any site you like to find information on the web. As for using Google: if you are unsure about something you are going to enter there actually having a meaning outside the game, you should be careful with the results you get via the search. A way of trying to avoid walkthroughs (by the time this is being written, there are none afaik) is to put a minus sign "-" before the word you wish the result not to include, e.g. "-swell". Unfortunately this doesn't always protect you from seeing what you do not wish to see.
You should be able to work out the solutions to all the levels with no link to Google with no external information sources — everything that can be found on the previous swell levels and on this main site (even the links) count as "internal information sources" (exclusive of possible Google links in the previous levels, we would have put one on the level you are on if we'd meant you should search the web for an answer).
This depends on the level. If you have a very limited or no knowledge about the following subjects: world wide web, languages, maths, programming, photo editing and some other topics that occur in the riddle, this game might still be for you. If a level is about maths and you happen to be on the fourth grade and thus haven't studied square roots just yet but think that the solution can be found only by using them, you can visit a maths web site or /join #mathematics and ask for help. If you have been on a level for three minutes already and still don't know what to do and rush to beg for help from a fellow sweller, then you definitely haven't met the requirements of the suitable amount of thinking per level.
The main rule ("rule" meaning "regulation" here) of swell is not to cheat or help anyone to cheat in the game in any way. At the moment there are no known fully-working walkthroughs online but we still recommend you to avoid them in case someone'll put one up. We also recommend you not to put one in a place where others might run into it. It is also against the rules to tell the solutions to other people. This rule isn't meant to exclude the possibility of solving the riddle together with a friend, as we've ourselves tried this approach in other web games and found it exceedingly pleasing. Say, you and your friend are together on level six when you suddenly discover a curious picture and show it to your friend, and later it shows up that this happened to lead to the solution — okay. If you were on level 30 and your friend on level five and she was begging for the solution and then you give her the same picture — not okay. The difference is very slight but perhaps you can work out how this can be adapted to the situation you're in.
Have fun with swell!