Castles in the Sand

Castles in the Sand is a cozy beach-building game with real water.

You shape a beach out of wet sand with one finger: drag to scoop a channel, tap to pat a wall firm, press and hold to drip a spire, or press a bucket mold into the sand and lift it away. Then plant your flag and let the tide in.

The sea is not an animation. Water flows downhill, soaks into the sand, carries grains away and drops them somewhere else. A wall that gets too wet slumps. A moat that drains does its job. Your castle survives — or melts — for exactly the reasons a real one would.

TWELVE LEVELS, TWO KINDS OF PROBLEM • Protect the flag: plant a marker and keep the sea from soaking or undermining it for the length of a tide. • Hydraulics: route the incoming water into marked basins and make it stay there as the tide comes and goes. Each level teaches a tool and rewards you with a new bucket mold. Fewer grains moved means more stars: the best builders do the least.

FREE PLAY, ALWAYS Every mold you have unlocked, a full beach, and a tide button. No goals unless you want them.

MADE TO BE QUIET Sand hisses under your finger. Waves break, run up and drain away. Every sound in the game is synthesized to sit in the background, and there is a slow, soft music bed under it all — or turn either off.

FAIR AND QUIET ABOUT IT • No accounts, no sign-in. The game itself plays offline. • Ads appear between levels, never while you are building or while the tide is in — and one purchase removes them for good. • Lost a flag to the sea? You can watch an ad to save the level. Always your choice, and saying no costs nothing. • Nothing about you is collected. Ads are chosen from the game, not from you. • One finger to build, two fingers to look around. Works on phones and tablets.