Scorchy 🌋

How to play Scorchy

Scorchy is a free daily skill game set on an active volcano. Each day everyone gets the same course, and you have six shots to hit the crystal, and to hit it hard: a gentle touch just bounces off, so it has to be struck at speed to crack.

How the course works

Your cinder starts on a basalt boulder, an old survey post or a charred log. 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. The crystal sits on top of a basalt column, a different height every day, with a lava lake behind it and a small obsidian shard on the near edge. A slab of obsidian leans over the crystal, so shots that drop in steeply glance off it; the way in is a fast, fairly flat shot through the gap. Lava pools on the ground end any shot that lands in them. Obsidian spires, a different height every day, send shots ricocheting, and on some days steam geysers erupt on and off, throwing anything above them upward. Hot, gusty air blows on most days; the wind vane in the corner shows it. There is always at least one shot that cracks the crystal.

Scoring and the helper

Cracking the crystal 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. Volcanoes 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 cracked the crystal. 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

• Power matters: a lob that just reaches the crystal bounces off. Hit it on the way up or flat.
• Time a geyser: a burst of steam can lift a low shot up to the crystal's height.
• Your last shot's path stays on screen, and each miss tells you how close you came, or if you hit too softly.

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

What Scorchy trains

• Aim and power. Hitting the crystal through heat and rock.
• Intuitive physics. Predicting how geysers, wind and slopes affect your shot.
• Learning from misses. Every try tells you what to change.

Did you know?

• Some of the largest natural crystals ever found, gypsum beams around 11 metres long, grew in the Cave of the Crystals in Mexico.
• Lava can be hotter than 1,100°C when it erupts.