Six sandcastles, three bucket brigades and a sea that keeps sending thin wave lines up the beach. Throw sand where a line is going; the burst opens, holds and closes, and stops whatever runs into it.
Mood, both ways
The game keeps two numbers with you. Every wave line you stop raises its energy, and three in one burst raises it more. A castle washed away lowers its calm. Time brings both back toward the dial you set. Four words name where it is.
- DAWN warming up. Cool colors, a slow major arpeggio, slightly wider bursts.
- FLOW a run of saves. Bright lines, the music opens up.
- RUSH hot colors and raster bars in the border, a faster tempo, more lines that split, and now and then a fast rogue wave.
- DRIFT after a castle falls. The lines slow, the bursts open wider, the notes thin out.
Your side is the dial: CALM (castles rebuild at the end of every round and the game never ends); PLAY (six castles, one rebuilt every 10,000 points); RUSH (starts hot, leans into the splits). The game relaxes toward it. The mood tape from your session stays in this browser, and when you leave after a game, the game hands its mood to the town.
Two machines
ATARI 800XL (1983, POKEY). The Graphics 0 blue with a black border and light-blue lines. Raw square waves with a noise bite, in the POKEY spirit. A READY and a RUN before the beach.
COMMODORE 64 (1982, SID). The blue field inside a light-blue border. A resonant filter sweep on every voice, in the SID spirit. The banner, LOAD and RUN before the beach.
Sandcastle is a tribute to Missile Command, the 1980 Atari arcade game designed by Dave Theurer: three bases, six cities, an end-of-wave bonus for what is left. Here the cities are sandcastles and the bases are buckets, and nothing is emulated or copied. The lines, the font, the music and the palettes were written for this page. Read the research note on the original.
The rules
Each brigade holds ten handfuls of sand a round, and the middle one throws fastest. A wave line stopped is 25 points, a rogue wave 125. A wave line that reaches a castle washes it away; one that reaches a bucket empties it until the next round. When a round's waves are spent, every castle standing is worth 100 and every handful left 5, all times the round's multiplier, which climbs every second round to six. A castle is rebuilt every 10,000 points. The game ends when the last castle goes, except on CALM.
Controls
- Tap or click where a wave line is heading: the nearest brigade with sand throws there.
- Keys: arrows or W A S D move the crosshair, Space throws from the nearest brigade, 1, 2 and 3 throw from the left, middle and right one. P pauses, F full screen, M sound, C scanlines, X switches machines, Z turns the dial.
- FULL uses the Fullscreen API. iOS Safari has none for pages, so the stage fills the screen instead; add to Home Screen for the whole display.