A ship has crashed into the ocean, leaving a never ending slew of survivors that are floating on the water. You are trying to save as many as you can, using your little boat, and bring them to your island. When it comes to actually helping and saving these survivors, there are a lot of moves that you need to make.
In Sliding Seas, you are given levels that have a bunch of different tiles. You can combine lines of three tiles that are the same. At first, these tiles are mainly deep water, which gets more shallow and eventually becomes sand, before mountain ranges. If you match four tiles that are the same together, you’ll end up making rafts. If you match more or create a tile that is at the max height, you can make a shelter. Most of the levels have the goal of getting different people into these shelters.
Each level has a goal, which you need to fulfil to move onto the next level. This can be a specific number of survivors that need to be collected, but as time goes on, some levels will require you to gain a specific number of resources. Resources in Sliding Seas are gained by matching tiles near locked crates, which slowly break over time.
You do have a limited number of moves to follow if you are doing a resource level, however if you have survivors on the screen, you have as many moves as you need. With that said, if a survivor is on land or in water too long, without their needs met, they will start calling out. Once someone has called out, you have 12 moves to make them happy, before they die and the level ends. That might mean getting a shelter for someone on land, or getting a rafter or land for someone on water.
There are power ups in Sliding Seas; dynamite to break a tile, a tornado to switch up all the tiles, and a magnet to pull survivors to a land tile, who are in the area directly touching the tile you select. As you complete levels, you will actually build up a town, where you can make decisions on what different buildings, decorations and more you want, as well as getting VIPs with quests to become citizens of your town.
Sliding Seas is a really polished, wonderful puzzle game with a lot of different levels to explore. The game itself is free, on mobile devices. Though it has in-app purchases, they do not feel needed or required to pass levels, and you can totally get there on your own!