You are a crab under the beach. Walking into sand digs it, so
every tunnel down there is one you made. Catch everything on the beach
and you go on to the next one.
👆 Moving
Put your left thumb anywhere in the ✥ move box and push
the way to go; the crab walks while you push and stops when you let go.
(⚙️ Settings can show four arrows there instead.)
On a keyboard: the arrow keys or W A S D. A gamepad works too.
Digging is slower than walking. Your own tunnels are your quick
way out.
🫧 The pump
🫧 Pump (or the space bar) stops the crab and sends the bubble
hose down the tunnel you are facing. It only goes where the tunnel is dug.
When it takes hold, keep the button down: four puffs and it pops.
You stand still while the hose is on. Walk away and it lets go.
Let go early and it goes down again. While it is pumped up it
cannot hurt you, and nothing can get past it.
🪨 Rocks
Dig the sand out from under a rock and it shakes, then falls. The
red strip shows where. It keeps falling down a shaft.
It squashes anything under it, you too. One under a rock pays
1,000, two 2,500, three 4,000.
After two rocks have fallen, an ice cream comes to where you
started.
👀 Through the sand
Something that has no tunnel to you waits a while, then comes through
the sand as a pair of eyes. Like that it is slow, it cannot hurt
you and you cannot pump it.
It forms again in a tunnel, never right beside you, and you can
pump it as it forms.
💦 Eels spit
An eel on your level, with a clear tunnel between you, stops and
opens its mouth. The tunnel in front of it flickers blue. Then it
spits. Go up or down, off its level.
They do not spit on 🌱 Sprout.
🏃 The last one runs
When one is left it runs for the top of the beach and off the end. You
get the beach either way, but not its points.
⭐ Scoring
A pop pays 200, 300, 400 or 500, more the deeper it is. An eel
popped from along its own level tunnel pays double.
An extra turn at 10,000, and then every 40,000.
🗺️ Playing a beach again
The menu lists every beach you have reached on each of 🌱 🧭 🏆. Tap one
and ▶️ Play starts there, with all your turns, and carries on to the
beaches after it. The number under a beach is your best on it: the points
you won on that beach in a game where you cleared it. ✨ is the
newest beach you have reached; after a game it is the one Play starts.
The best game, under the buttons, counts only games that start at
beach 1.
🙂 Levels
🌱 Sprout: three slow ones, five turns, and no spitting. 🧭 Scout: four, and the eels spit. 🏆 Ace: five fast ones that lose patience quickly.
The first eight beaches are always the same. After that every beach is
new, with more on it, and beach 12 is the same beach for
everybody, so you can learn it.
A level sets the switches in ⚙️ Settings; change one and you are
playing your own mix. Detail picks a flat picture or 3D from Low to Max; it steps down by itself if frames run slow, and back up when they run fast again.