Skiplash vs Retro Buzz

One tap. Perfect timing. A stone across still water. Skiplash is a minimalist skipping-stone game about rhythm, restraint, and waiting for your moment. Each tap sends your stone arcing toward the surface. Time it right and it skims. Time it perfectly and it flies. HOW TO PLAY Tap just as the stone grazes the water. Too early, it drops. Too late, it sinks. Land the sweet spot for a perfect skip — and a streak of perfects builds a multiplier worth up to 5×. The further you fly, the rougher the sea becomes. A WORLD THAT TURNS The sky moves through a full day as you play — noon glare, golden hour, dusk, starlight, dawn — and the water, your stone, and every word on screen carry the hour's light. Shooting stars cross the night, and the moon rises in its true phase, waxing and waning through the month as the real one does. Gulls glide by from sunrise to sunset. Schools of fish drift below, and if you watch the deep, a turtle or a shark may cruise past. Time itself persists: it carries between runs, keeps turning while you sit on the menu, and is waiting where you left it tomorrow. Or let the sea keep your hours instead — one setting anchors the whole cycle to your own clock, so opening Skiplash at dusk finds the water at dusk. THE SOUND OF THE WATER Skiplash has no soundtrack. It has a sea — a soft bed of lapping that thickens into wind-blown chop as the waves build, and quiets after dark. Every sound here, the water included, is generated as you play rather than recorded, so calm water and a storm genuinely sound different, not just louder. It steps aside if you're already listening to something, and anything you'd rather not hear can be switched off. WHEN THE DEEP TAKES YOUR STONE A sunk run can be rescued. A little lifebuoy floats your stone back up, a slingshot rises from the ring, waits for a level moment on the swell, and flings you back in — score, skips, and speed intact. Saves come five for $0.99, sync across your devices through iCloud, and work up to three times per run. Entirely optional, never pushed. FEATURES • One-tap control, scales with your precision • Streak multiplier system — 2×, 3×, 4×, and 5× • Up to 25 points on a single flawless skip • Super-skip every 20 skips — a soaring launch with a perfect-landing bonus • A full day-night cycle that persists between sessions — or follows your own clock • A moon in tonight's true phase • An ambient sea that rises and falls with the waves and the hour • A living scene: gulls, fish schools, sea turtles, sharks, shooting stars • Game Center leaderboards — score, distance, and skips • Pause with a countdown resume and a moment of shield after • Auto-pauses for calls and interruptions • Settings for sound effects, the ambient sea, haptics, and the real-time sky • 120 Hz ProMotion on capable iPhones and iPads • Haptics tuned to each skip quality • Automatic light, dark, and tinted icon variants • Remembers your best score, best distance, and most skips • Full iPhone and iPad support CALM, BY DESIGN No ads. No tracking. No sign-ups. Works offline. Easy on battery. Every sound and vibration can be switched off. One optional purchase — saves — and nothing else for sale. Cast. Skip. Settle.

RETRO BUZZ — A LOVE LETTER TO THE ARCADE. Dodge, shoot, deflect, chase and raid your way through a swarm of pixel-art insects across an endless ladder of escalating stages. Inspired by the arcade legends of the early '80s, Retro Buzz layers modern game-feel — combo multipliers, powerup drops, a dodge-dash, screen shake, telegraphed enemy fire — onto chunky multi-colour pixel art with a soft neon glow. SIX STAGE TYPES — AND YOU EARN THE DETOURS Formation stages are the backbone. Everything else happens because of what you did in them. • FORMATION STAGES — The classic. Bees, butterflies and Queen Bees fly in choreographed lines, settle into formation, then dive at you in pairs and groups. Watch the marked RUNNERS: they bolt for the planet once the swarm thins. Kill them all for a bonus... • PURSUIT — ...or let one escape and next stage you chase it down. Free 2D flight over a scrolling planet surface, ground turrets, waves that push harder the harder you fire, and a fortress with three cores to crack at the end. The escapees turn up as 5× bounties. • BASE ASSAULT — If a Queen carries your captured fighter off, or you shoot down the spy ship and grab its beacon, the next stage is a free-roaming raid across a looping star map. Your ship flies forward, you steer, and fire goes fore and aft. Hunt the hex stations on the radar, punch the core through its hatch (or strip all six cannon pods), dodge mines, and watch the alert climb from GREEN to RED. Find the station holding your fighter and it rejoins you as a wingman. • CHALLENGE STAGES — Bonus rounds where twin lines trace S-curves, loops, figure-8s and spirals across the screen. No damage. Pure accuracy. • BONUS ROUND — Score a PERFECT on a challenge stage and your ship becomes a paddle. The swarm fires, you bounce it back, and the ricochets one-shot anything they touch. • BOSS BATTLES — Every fifth stage the Queen Hornet drifts overhead: three HP-keyed phases, aimed shots, three-way spreads and U-shaped dive attacks. You get a 3-hit buffer per life. Every fourth stage cleared grants an extra life, and a rare 1UP drop floats down from killed enemies. Deep runs feel earned. POWERUPS R — Rapid Fire. Faster fire, bigger bullet cap. S — Spread Shot. Three-way fan. O — Shield Orb. Absorbs the next hit. B — Smart Bomb. Wipes every diving enemy on screen. ! — Beacon. Dropped by the spy ship. Reveals the enemy bases. 1 — Extra Life. Very rare. Treasure it. POLISHED FEEL • Hit feedback on every impact: sprite flash, sparks, debris, screen shake. • Combo multiplier — chain kills without a miss for up to 5× score. • Enemy fire is telegraphed at the muzzle, so you always get a fair read. • Enemies bank into their turns and face where they fly. • Hand-drawn multi-colour sprites: striped bees, red-winged butterflies with eyespots, crowned Queen Bees and a 48×48 Queen Hornet. • Optional CRT scanlines. Persistent high score and best stage. • Leave the title screen alone and the game plays itself — a different stage type every time. CONTROLS An analog stick, DASH and FIRE live in their own band under the playfield, so your thumbs never cover the action. Hold FIRE to shoot, tap DASH to dodge through bullets. The stick moves you sideways in the classic stages, flies in 2D on the planet run, and steers on the base raid. NO ADS. NO IAP. NO ACCOUNTS. JUST THE GAME. Best paired with: a quiet evening, a dim room, and the satisfying feeling of finally finding the base that took your fighter.