How to play Tiltanic

How to steer

On a phone or a tablet, you steer by tilting it. Tap “set sail”. On an iPhone or an iPad, the browser asks if the page may use motion sensors. Say yes.

Tilt the left edge of the phone down and the boat goes up. Tilt the right edge down and the boat goes down. A gentle tilt is enough: 14 degrees to each side is the full range.

Any grip works. The game takes the way you hold the phone, when a run starts, as level. The boat waits until you rock the phone a little. Do not play while you walk, drive or ride. Hold the phone firmly.

• No tilt? Drag a finger sideways on the screen. Drag left to lift the boat.
• On a computer, move the mouse left or right over the game. Left lifts the boat. The arrow keys, or A and D, work too. A QR code beside the game opens the course on your phone.
• Keys: Space or Enter sets sail and tries again. P or Escape pauses.

The goal: pass the gates

The boat sails on its own, and gates come toward it. Most gates have an anchor that hangs from above and a sea mine that floats up from below. Some have only one of the two. Steer the boat through the gap.

Each gate that you pass is one point. A run ends when the boat touches an anchor or a mine. There is no timer and there are no lives. You just try again.

A level bar at the bottom of the screen shows how you tilt while you sail. It turns from green to orange when you push the water hard.

When the boat sinks, a word shows why: “too high!” for an anchor, “too low!” for a mine, “overcorrected!” after you swing the phone back and forth, and “old wave!” after a big move from more than a second earlier.

The gates get narrower and closer together until about gate 50. The sea also changes as your score grows. The first change comes at 5 gates. You can reach a lava sea at 10 gates and the inside of a whale at 20, among others. A new sea changes the look and the music, never how the boat moves.

The daily course

Every day has a new course. Everyone who plays on the same date gets the same gates, so scores are fair to compare. The new course starts at midnight on your own clock.

Each day also has its own sky, visitor and tune. They change the look and the sound, never the gates.

To see how you did, tap “today’s leaderboard” on the title screen. It shows the top 10 captains of the day and where you stand. A new board starts each midnight on your clock. The server replays each run to check the score. After you play, the chip can show your place in the top 10 (“#3 today”) or your share in the top half (“top 25% today”). More in the help page.

The warm-up for new players

A new player starts with the warm-up: a gentler sea. Small tilts move the water less, and dots in front of the boat show where it will ride. This help fades away over your first 8 tries, or sooner if you score high.

Warm-up runs do not go on the leaderboard. The “warm-up” chip on the title screen is a switch. Tap it to turn the warm-up off, or on again.

Streak and shield

Play one try a day to build a streak. The chip on the title screen counts your “days in a row”. Any finished try counts for the day that it ends on.

After 3 days in a row, you earn a shield. A shield saves your streak when you miss one day. Then it is used up, and you earn the next one after 3 more days. If you miss two days in a row, or one day with no shield, the streak starts again at 1.

If you lose a streak of 5 days or more, you can win it back for free. Come back within 8 days of your last day, and finish enough tries on the day you return. A streak of 5 to 9 days needs 3 tries. A streak of 10 to 16 days needs 4 tries, and 17 to 25 days needs 5. Longer streaks need more. You can use this once in 30 days.

Gifts and my boat

Sometimes the sea gives your boat a gift. A gift is a look for the boat: a paint, a hat, a flag or a trail. It is only a picture. It has no price, you cannot sell it, and it does not change how the boat sails. No gift needs a share, a streak or a payment.

After a try of 3 seconds or more, the chance of a gift is 3 in 10. The first such try always gives one. The exact odds are in the privacy policy.

Tap the small boat icon on the title screen to open “my boat”. There you choose what your boat wears, and you see your album of visitors, skies and seas. The switch “gifts from the sea” turns gifts off.

Bots, dares, ghosts and crews

Bots. A bot is a boat that passes a set number of gates. A flag shows the gate where it ends, and a small bot also has a ghost: a see-through copy of its boat. The goal says how many gates beat it, for example “beat the bot: 8 gates”. The game picks the bot from your last 8 scores, so the goal fits you.

Dares. After a run, tap “dare a friend”. The game makes a link that you send in any chat. Your friend sails the same course, and can race a ghost of your best run of the day, when the game could make one.

Crews. When a friend plays your dare, you join a crew. A crew is a small group of up to 8 phones. Each phone shares its best score of the day. You see it in the “crew” tab of the leaderboard. Before each run, the game tells you who sees your score. You can tap “leave crew”, or turn off the switch “friends see my score”.

Sound

The game makes its own music, with a new tune each day. The sound button at the top has three states, one after the other: “Music and sounds”, “Sound off” and “Sounds, no music”. On a computer, the M key does the same.

Reminders and notes

Two optional tools help you remember to play. Both are off until you choose them.

• A daily reminder. In “today’s leaderboard”, tap “remind me every day” and pick a time. You get a calendar file with a daily event that stops after 90 days.
• Notes. The game asks first, and your browser asks only after you say “yes, send me notes”. You get at most 3 notes a day, and none from 22:00 to 07:00 your time. You can turn them off in the leaderboard.

Tips that help

• Move early and move a little. Water keeps every push, and the boat needs time to rise or to sink. A big tilt makes a wave that comes back to you one or two seconds later.
• Do not fix a mistake with a big move. It makes a bigger wave. This is what “overcorrected!” means.
• Read the hint. Before the next run, it often says what to try, for example “too high: tilt right sooner”.
• Lock the screen rotation. The game pauses when the screen turns, and when you leave the page. Tap “keep sailing” to go on.