Drifty 🦦

How to play Drifty

Drifty is a free daily skill game set on a river. Each day everyone gets the same stretch of river, and you have six shots to launch your pebble across the water and into the otter's holt, the den dug into the face of the far bank.

How the course works

Your pebble starts on a stump, a fence post or a fallen log on the near bank. Its height and position change every day, but it is never higher than a stump, and it can be on the left or the right. Drag back anywhere on the course and let go to launch: the further you pull, the harder it flies, like a slingshot. You can aim in any direction, from flat left to flat right. On a keyboard, use the left and right arrow keys to swing the arrow and up and down to set the power, then press Space or Enter. A shot that lands in the river is swept away. Logs drift back and forth on the current, and your pebble skips off them, so timing a bounce off a log is a good way across; the logs are always in the same place when you launch, so you can learn their rhythm. Old mooring posts stand in the water, a different height every day. The holt sits low in the far bank with a small stone in the shallows in front of it, and a willow leans out over it, so shots that drop in steeply usually glance off the branch. The far bank's muddy face soaks up a bounce, and a bramble hedge at the far side stops anything that flies long. A breeze blows down the valley on most days; the wind vane in the corner shows it. There is always at least one shot that reaches the holt.

Scoring and the helper

Reaching the holt on shot 1 earns 12 points, then 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 for shots 2 to 6. Six misses earn 0. The path preview draws the start of your flight path for one shot at a time, on shots 1 to 3. Using it at all halves the day's score, and once you have, you can switch it on again for another of those shots at no extra cost. Rivers are gentler early in the week and trickier towards Sunday; the stars show today's difficulty.

Streaks and badges

Your play streak counts the days in a row you've played, and your cleared streak counts the days in a row you've reached the holt. Play seven days in a row to earn a cycle bonus of 7 points, or 14 if you cleared all seven. Your best play streak unlocks new skins at 7, 30 and 100 days.

Tips

• Come in flat and low: the holt faces the river, and the willow guards it from above.
• A drifting log is a springboard. Watch where it is when your pebble arrives, not where it starts.
• Your last shot's path stays on screen, and each miss tells you how close you came.

More puzzles: all Streakly games · how scoring, streaks and badges work

What Drifty trains

• Intuitive physics. Using the river's current instead of fighting it.
• Aim and power. Judging where to launch so the current carries you home.
• Reading conditions. Each day's flow changes the best shot.

Did you know?

• An otter's riverbank den is called a holt.
• The Nile and the Amazon are the world's two longest rivers, and experts still debate which is longer.