How to Play Skipstones
Skipstones is a two-tap stone-skipping arcade set against Hokusai-inspired japonisme woodblock water. Each throw uses two gauge inputs.
- Tap 1 — Angle. A needle sweeps from 0° (flat) up to 45° (high arc) and back down at 0.55° per frame — roughly 33° a second, so one full round trip takes about 2.7 seconds. Low angles give more skips; steep ones throw the stone in tall arcs that eat the frame and often carry it off the right edge before the chain gets going. Lock inside the 12°–18° band for a +50 perfect-tap bonus. That band is 6° of a 45° sweep, so the needle sits in it for about a fifth of a second on each pass.
- Tap 2 — Power. A horizontal meter sweeps 0%–100% and back at 0.011 per frame, about a second and a half each way. Power sets the stone's total launch speed — 20 pixels per frame at the far end of the bar — and the angle you already locked decides how that speed splits between forward carry and height. Lock inside the 55%–75% band for another +50.
- After the second tap the stone launches from the left bank automatically. Watch the skip counter climb in the corner and aim for the five-skip Wave Break.
Scoring
- Each skip scores the horizontal distance covered since the previous contact, scaled by 0.42, then multiplied by a chain bonus of +15% per skip on that stone — ×1.15 on the first contact, ×1.75 on the fifth, ×3.25 on the fifteenth. Every skip pays at least 5 points however short the hop.
- Perfect-tap angle: +50 pts. Perfect-tap power: +50 pts. Ten perfect taps across a run is 500 points banked before a stone has skipped once.
- Wave Break, awarded on the fifth skip of a single stone: +500 pts, a koto pluck and a vermillion WAVE BREAK! label rising off the water. It fires once per stone.
- Run completion across all 5 stones: +200 pts.
Tips
- Flat angles (under 20°) are almost always better than steep ones for maximising skip count. A near-zero angle gives a short first contact and then a long chain of low hops; 45° spends most of the frame on a few tall arcs and usually exits the right edge before the chain builds.
- Power is a real trade rather than a single correct answer. More power means longer hops and bigger distance scores per skip, but the stone reaches the right edge sooner and the throw ends. Less power means shorter hops worth fewer distance points each, but many more of them and a far higher chain multiplier by the end. Aim at the 55%–75% band regardless, because that +50 is guaranteed and the distance points are not.
- Wind is not a difficulty ramp; it alternates. Stone 1 is dead calm, stone 2 carries a headwind, stone 3 a stronger tailwind, stone 4 the hardest headwind of the set and stone 5 the strongest tailwind. What does climb steadily is water resistance: stones 3, 4 and 5 bleed forward speed faster on every contact, so their chains run shorter even when the wind is helping.
- The chain multiplier rewards patience over spectacle. A stone that reaches fifteen contacts is finishing on ×3.25 and collected Wave Break along the way, so nursing a low flat throw down the length of the frame often out-scores one glorious arc.
How the Skip Physics Work
Every frame the stone is pulled down by a constant gravity of 0.32 pixels per frame squared and nudged sideways by that stone's wind. When it reaches the waterline the game asks two questions: is the stone still falling at 1.4 pixels per frame or more, and is it still moving forward faster than 0.5? If both are true it skips. If either fails it plunks and the stone's turn is over.
A skip keeps 62% of the downward speed and flips it upward, so 38% of the vertical energy goes into the splash at every contact. Forward speed is handled separately and much more gently: the stone keeps 87% of it on stones 1 and 2, and less on the later ones as water resistance rises. There is one deliberate exception that shapes the whole game. As long as the stone is still moving forward, a rebound that would have come back up slower than 1.4 is floored to exactly 1.4. Without that floor a flat throw would bounce back at almost nothing and plunk on its second contact, which would make the flattest angles the worst instead of the best.
The consequence is that a stone almost never dies from running out of bounce. A throw ends one of two ways: forward speed decays past 0.5 and the next contact becomes a plunk, or the stone simply sails off the right edge of the frame. Both read the same on the scoreboard, but they come from opposite mistakes. Running out of speed means you threw too softly to work the water; sailing off the edge means you spent your skips on distance instead of count.
Reading the Water and the Frame
The playfield is 800 by 480 pixels with the horizon fixed at 330, leaving five stacked bands of water beneath it — the layered blues that give the game its woodblock look. The stone always launches from 80 pixels in, and there is no camera: the entire throw plays out inside that one fixed frame, which leaves about 780 pixels of water between the launch point and the edge. Every pixel spent on a long opening arc is a pixel unavailable for a longer chain. The heads-up display keeps the arithmetic in front of you — score and personal best on the left, the current stone number across the top, and a vermillion skip counter that appears the moment a stone makes its first contact.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the two-tap throwing mechanic work?
First tap locks the angle gauge — a needle sweeping from 0° (flat, more skips) to 45° (high arc, fewer skips). The 12°–18° sweet-spot band awards a +50 perfect-tap bonus. Second tap locks the power meter. The 55%–75% sweet-spot awards another +50. Then the stone flies automatically.
What determines how many times a stone skips?
A contact keeps 62% of the stone's downward speed and reverses it, so 38% of the vertical energy goes into the splash, while forward speed is kept at 87% on the first two stones and less on the later ones as water resistance rises. The stone rarely stops because it has run out of bounce, though: as long as it is still moving forward, the rebound is floored at a minimum upward speed, so a flat throw keeps hopping. A stone's turn ends when its forward speed decays below 0.5 pixels per frame, or when it passes the right edge of the frame. That is why a flat launch angle spreads the throw across a long chain of short hops while a steep one spends most of the frame on a few tall arcs and often leaves the right edge before the chain builds. Each stone also carries its own wind — sometimes a headwind, sometimes a tailwind — pushing the horizontal carry either way.
How does Daily Challenge mode work?
Tap DAILY on the menu. Wind and gauge starting offsets for all 5 stones are seeded from the UTC date — every player worldwide gets identical physics that day. Daily scores submit to a separate leaderboard. A vermillion seal badge appears on the menu once you complete a daily run.
How many stones do I get, and what changes between them?
Five stones per run, counted across the top of the screen. Two things change as you work through them. Each stone has its own fixed wind — stone 1 calm, stone 2 a headwind, stone 3 a tailwind, stone 4 the strongest headwind and stone 5 the strongest tailwind — and water resistance climbs across stones 3, 4 and 5, so those bleed forward speed faster on every contact. Between stones a card shows the one you just finished, your running skip total and the stone coming up; a tap skips the wait. Finishing all five adds a 200-point completion bonus and unrolls the summary scroll with your score, total skips and longest chain.
What are the controls and keyboard shortcuts?
One input does everything: tap or click anywhere on the canvas, or press Space or Enter. The same action starts a run, locks the angle, locks the power, skips the between-stones card and restarts from the summary. Escape or P pauses and resumes, and the game pauses itself if you switch away from the tab mid-throw. M toggles sound, as does the speaker pill in the top-right corner of the canvas. Everything lives on the canvas, so there are no separate buttons to hunt for on a phone.
What is the Wave Break event?
When a single stone achieves 5 or more consecutive skips, Wave Break fires: the top wave-crest ink line re-draws itself in bright white-blue over 800 ms (Hokusai brush-stroke animation), a koto-string pluck plays, and +500 bonus points are awarded with an ink-red WAVE BREAK! label rising from the skip chain point.
Where the Points Actually Are
It is worth being precise about the scoring, because the obvious reading of it is wrong. Distance points are small. The horizontal gap between two contacts is scaled by 0.42 before the chain multiplier touches it, so even a 200-pixel arc is worth 84 raw points before the multiplier, and the shortest hops of a long chain bottom out at the 5-point floor. The fixed bonuses dwarf them. Ten perfect gauge taps across a run come to 500 points. A single Wave Break is 500 on its own. Run completion is another 200. A player who never lands one spectacular skip, but who hits both sweet spots on all five stones and gets one stone to five contacts, has already banked 1,200 points from bonuses alone.
That reframes the game. The gauges are not a warm-up before the interesting part — they are the largest single lever on your score, and they are the only part of a run entirely under your control once the stone is in the air. The needle gives you about a fifth of a second inside the angle band on each pass and the meter about a third of a second inside the power band, which is comfortably hittable once you stop watching the water and start watching the gauge. Missing both taps on a stone costs 100 points before the throw has even happened.
Chasing the Wave Break
Wave Break fires once per stone, on the fifth contact and only then, so there is nothing further to win from the bonus by pushing a stone harder. The reason to keep it alive anyway is the chain multiplier, which climbs another 15 percentage points on every contact for as long as the throw lasts. Five contacts is not a high bar once the floor rule makes sense. A flat throw at moderate power clears it comfortably: the first contact comes almost immediately, and the hops that follow settle into a steady rhythm as the rebound sits at its floor and forward speed decays by a fixed fraction each time. The throws that miss it are the steep ones, which cross most of the frame in a single arc and run out of water long before they run out of energy. If two stones in a row have failed to reach five, flatten the angle rather than adding power.
Daily Challenge Mode
The menu carries two pills, CLASSIC and DAILY, and the mode you pick also decides which leaderboard your score lands on. The practical difference at the controls is the gauges. A classic run always starts every stone with the needle at 0° travelling upward and the meter at zero; a daily reseeds both the starting offset and the sweep direction before each of the five stones, so you cannot fall back on muscle memory for where the sweep begins. Finish the day's run and a vermillion seal is stamped on the menu, in the heads-up display and on the summary scroll for the rest of that UTC day; replaying does not remove it.
The Woodblock Look
Skipstones is drawn entirely in code — there is not a single image file in the game. A warm washi-paper gradient carries a flat vermillion sun disc high on the right, with four gust streaks drifting across it at staggered speeds. Below the horizon each water band gets its own hand-wobbled ink crest, drawn a little thinner as it recedes so the water reads as depth rather than texture. Contacts add expanding ripple rings in crest ink and a small burst of foam strokes, the skip ring growing with how fast the stone was travelling and a plunk leaving a wider one. The summary arrives as a rice-paper scroll that unrolls down the screen with vermillion bands at head and foot. The whole palette is five blues, ink black, washi cream and a single vermillion, and that last colour is spent deliberately — the sun, the chain labels, the Wave Break, the seal. When something turns vermillion, it is telling you that you scored.
