Bilging
Bilging is one of five duty puzzles and the first puzzle new players are assigned to practice. Its mechanics heavily borrow from Nintendo's Tetris Attack and Popcap's Bejeweled.
Good bilgers help to empty water that gradually gathers in a ship. The higher the bilge level, the slower the ship goes.
Contents
[hide]Basic Gameplay
The mouse or arrow keys move a two-piece target around the board. Clicking or pressing space swaps two selected pieces horizontally. Forming rows or columns of three pieces clears them and the bilge is pumped away.
Combos
The best bilgers can create combos that clear more than three pieces. Clearing four or five pieces offers a slight bonus, but one should try to aim for clearing more than one column or row with one move. There are different messages for each combo:
- 3 - no message
- 4 - Good
- 5 - Great
- 3x3 - Arrr! 3x3!
- 3x4 - Arrr! 3x4!
- 3x5 - Yarrr! 3x5!
- 4x4 - Har! 4x4!
- 4x5 - Yarrr! 4x5!
- 5x5 - Yarrr! 4x5!
- 3x3x3 - Bingo!
- 3x3x4 - Bingo!
- 3x3x5 - Bingo!
- 3x4x4 - Bingo!
- 3x4x5 - Bingo!
- 3x5x5 - Bingo!
- 3x3x3x3 - Sea Donkey!
- 3x3x3x4 -
- 3x3x3x5 -
- 3x3x4x4 -
- 3x3x4x5 -
- 3x3x5x5 - Vegas!
Chaining
It is possible to create chain reactions when bilging, but as chain reactions are often serendipitous, they do not add a great scoring bonus.
The Water Line
The water line across the base of the screen shows the bilger how much work he or she has left to do. Below the water line, pieces move more slowly. All bilge puzzles have at least three lines filled with water, even with no bilge damage.
Crabs, Puffer Fish, and Jellyfish, Oh My!
- Crabs are immovable pieces that are cleared when they reach the water line. Crabs offer a high scoring bonus when cleared, especially when more than one is cleared at a time or if the water line is high. Any attempt to swap a crab fails and causes the crab to shriek.
- The puffer fish expands when clicked and clears itself and the eight adjacent pieces. (Exception: clicking on two adjacent puffer fishes simulatenously just swaps both of them.) Since clicking on a pufferfish counts as a swap and all swaps reduce your score slightly, clicking a puffer fish slightly reduces your score unless it results in a chain reaction clear or crab being cleared. Since puffer fish leaves a 3x3 gap in the puzzle, they can be effective at clearing crabs below them, particularly if the water level is low. Puffer fish can also be used to destroy adjacent crabs but removing crabs from the board this way does not give you any score bonus.
- Swapping a normal piece with a jellyfish clears all the pieces of the same type on the board. Attempting to switch a jellyfish with a crab does nothing. If you attempt to swap a pufferfish and a jellyfish, the pufferfish expands as normal, thus destroying (and wasting) the jellyfish.
Bilge scoring
Bilge scoring comes from your efficiency to clear pieces. Unlike sailing, bilging also takes time delay directly into account. A delay of about ten seconds is acceptable when searching for a new move. A good balance of strategy and speed is best for a bilger.
Historical Notes
In release 2005-07-12, the bubbles and droplets were added. The overall animation speed also increased.
