Steppy Steppy
Tips & Tricks
You can't tell the good stones from the crumbly ones. So how do you get better at this? Turns out there's quite a lot you can do.
1. Stop staring at the stones
Everybody does this for their first few goes and it never once helps. The stone designs are shuffled at random and have absolutely nothing to do with which one is safe. There's no pattern. The left one isn't luckier than the right one.
If you feel like you've spotted a system — you haven't. That's just what random things feel like. And every second spent staring is a second you're not spending getting ready to jump again.
2. Decide where you're going before you land
This is the big one. If you only take one tip, take this one.
Your first crumbly stone gives you a decent little window to react. A second one in a row gives you almost nothing — and if you're still making your mind up when that happens, you've already lost.
So choose early. While your character is still flying through the air, look at the next row and decide which stone you'd jump to if this one crumbles. Put your finger over it and leave it there. Then when the cracks appear, you don't have to think at all. You just press.
3. A good stone beats getting further
Because everything resets when you land on a solid stone, the thing that really matters isn't how far you've got. It's how much of a safety net you've got if you're wrong.
Being on row three with a full warning is a much better place to be than row fifteen with hardly any. Getting far doesn't end runs. Stacking up crumbly stones ends runs.
4. The third one really isn't your fault
Worth knowing, so you don't feel hard done by. Land on three crumbly stones in a row and there's no cracking, no wobble and no warning — the stone just drops away. Nothing you do afterwards could have saved it.
Which means the third stone was really decided by the second one. Once you're standing on your second crumbly stone, the only thing in the world that matters is landing on a good one next. Fifty-fifty, and not much time to think about it. Which is exactly why tip two matters so much.
5. Keep your hand still
Not glamorous, but it works. The two stones sit close together, and on a phone your thumb covers a decent chunk of the gap between them. Rest your thumb in the middle and move it as little as you can and you'll do noticeably better than if you lift your hand and re-aim every single time.
On a computer it's the same idea — leave the mouse pointer sitting on the stone you've already chosen.
6. You're going to land on loads of crumbly stones
Twenty rows, and roughly half the time you'll pick the wrong one. That's not you being unlucky. That's just the game.
It was never asking you to avoid them. It's asking you to survive them one at a time and never let three pile up. Once that clicks, the whole thing stops feeling unfair and starts being properly fun.