Sailing
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.
Contents
[hide]Basic Gameplay
Sailing pieces drop in conjoined sets of two. The default allow 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 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 your long-term goal.
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 let an attached piece, in turn, clear 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.
Unlike many other puzzles, when a chain larger then a Vegas (the last chaining word) is broken, exponents are not used on the subsequent breaks. Instead, the word "Vegas" simply appears again and again in large text.
Clearing the Board
Once all the platforms on a screen have been cleared, you are given a new board. If you fill the board rather than clear it, you are given a "Booched!" message and the ship will suffer a small penalty. Boards become increasingly difficult. Once several boards have been cleared, your side stars will reset, as will your board difficulty.
Scoring
Clearing platforms helps to speed up a ship. Sailing is based on your efficiency to clear the boards you are given, and a performance indicator in the upper-right-hand corner is a good indication of how well you are 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.
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