Slack Tide: Sokoban Puzzle

The tide comes in every third step. Push the crates to their marks before the water lifts them off the sand, or let it do the carrying: a rising tide floats a crate up the beach, an ebbing one drags it back out. Rock holds. You can wade.

Slack Tide is Sokoban on a quiet shoreline: sand, marsh, ice and spring in pixel art, a slow piece of music at every stop, and nothing that hurries you. One rule, a hundred hand-made levels, and a walk from the sea to the source of a stream that has stopped running.

ONE RULE, TEN TWISTS The walk has ten stops, and each one adds a single wrinkle to the tide. At Tide Pools every hollow fills first. At King Tide the water comes in two rows at a time. At the Creek the current carries crates sideways. At the Floodgate one tide is yours to open. Quicksand keeps what sinks. Snowmelt comes down from above. On the Frozen Lake a pushed crate slides until it stops. At the Headwaters, everything you learned is asked for at once.

A HUNDRED LEVELS, MADE BY HAND Ten levels at every stop, each one drawn and solved before it was kept. Boards fit a phone held in one hand. Nothing is timed. The tide moves when you move, so a level can be studied for as long as you like, and undo is unlimited. Every level records its par once you have solved it, for the second visit.

TODAY'S TIDE One extra level a day, drawn from a pool inside the game, for the days you want a single puzzle with your coffee.

A WALK IN PIXEL ART Sand, rock, marsh, ice and spring, drawn in pixel art with a slow piece of music for every stop and the sounds of the shore under it. The story is a few lines on cards: the stream by the lighthouse has stopped, and the keeper closes the lamp for the season and walks upstream to find out why. A stamp book fills as you go.

MADE FOR ONE HAND Swipe or tap to walk. Larger text and a left-handed layout are in the settings, restart is a hold, and the whole game plays offline on iPhone and iPad.

From Princip Interactive, makers of Curse of the Seventh Star and Last Call.

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