Actual gameplay
Casual
Rock pool life
40 creatures to find
Tide Pool
Make a home. The sea brings the visitors
A rock pool fills and drains with the tide. Each high water brings visitors in through the channel, and they only stay if the pool gives them what they need: the right place to live, something to eat, and somewhere to hide from whatever eats them. You move the stones, plant the weed, pile up the shells, and keep a field journal of everyone who turns up.
Play now
Runs in your browser · no install · works on phones
How to play
- 1Buy a stone, weed or a pile of shells from the Stones tab and tap the pool to set it down. Drag anything already there to move it.
- 2Wait for high water. Newcomers arrive on the tide, and the Pool tab tells you in plain words how each one is doing and what it is missing.
- 3At low water, pick up the shells left on the sand, and tap the little eye when it appears over a creature to note down what it is doing.
What's in it
- 40 real rock pool species across four coves, from limpets and hermit crabs to an octopus, a conger eel and seahorses
- A food web: crabs eat winkles, starfish open mussels, the grey sea slug grazes anemones, and hunters leave when there is nothing to hunt
- Pairs that raise young and groups that grow when they are settled and there is room
- A tide clock with a moon that turns every eight days; spring tides at new and full moon bring the rare visitors
- A field guide with three notes per species: found, settled in, and something you watched it do
- No way to fail and nothing to rush; the tide keeps coming in while you are away