Sailing

A typical sailing board

The sailing puzzle is a duty puzzle whose mechanics are heavily borrowed from Dr. Mario. Players' performance at the puzzle will accelerate or decelerate a vessel. It is an alternative to the rigging puzzle, and is started from the same place on a vessel. Sailing stations on a vessel are taken up when a player starts either sailing or rigging.

Basic gameplay

Sailing pieces drop in conjoined sets of two. Using the default settings, the left and right arrow keys to move the falling piece left and right, while the up and down arrows rotate the falling piece. The spacebar may be used to hasten the descent of a piece. The sailing pieces represent water (blue), rope (yellow), and wind (white).

The object in sailing is to place the pieces into the stationary targets as efficiently as possible. Placing four or more connecting pieces of the same color in a row or a column clears these pieces, which scores points but can often be detrimental to the long-term goal.

Controls

Left and Right arrow keys: Move piece left and right
Up and Down arrow keys: Rotate piece clockwise and counterclockwise
Space bar: Drop piece down

Clearing platforms

Matching the outlined targets with pieces of the targets' color will clear the platform. All spaces without a target can be filled with any color or none at all, but pieces remain joined until the platform has been cleared. Plan carefully!

Chaining

The greatest sailors are masters of "chaining" or "comboing"; clearing a column of four pieces may free an attached piece, which in turn clears another platform, thus creating a "Double!".

Trying to clear the board in chains is the key to good sailing. It is best to fill up targets (or nearly fill them) at the bottom of the puzzle first, keeping the way clear for chaining pieces.

Combinations

Combinations are key in Sailing; breaking rows of four and clearing platforms can create chain reactions of pieces. The combinations follow the list below:

Single (no notification)
Double (score x2)
Triple (score x3)
Bingo! (score x4)
Donkey! (score x5)
Vegas!! (score x6)
- Anything more than Vegas will show Vegas!! again
- It is widely believed the multiplier keeps increasing in the obvious way.
- Many pirates use the notation V^k to describe such 6+k step chains.

The size of the notification reflects the raw score, up to a certain cap. Clearing a platform on step 3 will show "Triple" much larger than if the third step is just a normal clear, for example.

Clearing the board

Once all the platforms on a screen have been cleared, a new board is generated. blocking off the top of the board where new pieces enter will cause the game to print "Oh, ye Booched it!" message and the ship will suffer a small penalty in speed. Boards will become increasingly difficult as the game progresses, provided that there are no booches. Once several boards have been cleared, the side stars will reset, as will the board difficulty.

Scoring

Clearing platforms helps to speed up a ship. Sailing is based on how efficiently the boards are cleared, and a performance indicator in the upper-right-hand corner is a good indication of how well a pirate is sailing.

The sail on the left does not add much to the speed of the vessel, but the sparkling, golden sail on the right adds full speed to the vessel.

Token sailing

Token sailing is a variation of sailing, played by puzzlers during a blockade, flotilla, or sea monster hunt. Bonus shapes appear on top of the regular yellow, blue, and white sailing pieces. If two of the same bonus shapes are next to each other and are part of the same clear, then the puzzler contributes to filling the meter for that maneuver. On a sloop, it requires three bonus shapes to be completed to fill the meter for that maneuver. The bonus shapes do not have to be on pieces of the same color and can be part of a four-of-a-kind stack or a platform clear. Multiple bonus shapes can be cleared as part of a larger combo, but there does not seem to be any added bonus for clearing three of the same shape at once. There is a double bonus which seems to be awarded if the bonus shapes are popped as the triple or higher.

Bonus shapes appear only when a puzzler is performing well at the puzzle.