YahHeard

Driftlings

Move the world. Save the swarm.

  • Active Development
  • Game
  • Arcade puzzle
  • Works offline

An arcade puzzle game where a glowing swarm drifts on its own and you reshape the world around it — gates, fans, currents and a swarm that can change size.

View screenshots (4)Technical details
Driftlings gameplay: a swarm of glowing hexagonal creatures drifting through a dark world, with a red hazard block below and an ability bar for converge, burst, slow world, recall and shield
The swarm drifts on its own; you move the world around it.

Screenshots

Captured from the Windows desktop build, running in a phone-shaped window. The Android build could not start on this site's test emulator, which has no graphics hardware.

14

  • The swarm drifts on its own; you move the world around it.
  • A resize station: switch the swarm between normal, large and micro.
  • Gates open and close as you drag them, making a path for the swarm.
  • The title screen.

What Driftlings is

In Driftlings you never steer the swarm directly. It drifts by itself, and you make a path by moving the world: dragging gates and carriers, turning fans and membranes, sealing vents and isolating electric fields. The swarm can switch between normal, large and micro sizes — micro slips through narrow gates and rides currents, large breaks fragile walls and holds pressure plates — and split rings divide it into groups that must be reunited further on. Twenty-four authored sequences across eight chapters sit alongside Endless, Daily, Rescue, Speed, Perfect Swarm and Relaxed modes, with daily routes generated from the date and playable offline. Saves are versioned and written atomically with a safety copy, and a checkpoint journal records the position of every agent, so a run resumes exactly where it stopped. There is no account, server, advertising or analytics, and the packaged game requests no Android permissions at all.

What it does

  • Shape the world rather than steering the swarm
  • Three swarm sizes with different abilities
  • Split rings that divide the swarm into groups to reunite
  • Twenty-four authored sequences across eight chapters
  • Endless, Daily, Rescue, Speed, Perfect Swarm and Relaxed modes
  • Exact checkpoint recovery, offline, with no permissions

Getting Driftlings

Driftlings is still in development and is not distributed yet. It is roughly 80% of the way to a first public release.

At a glance

Status
Active Development
Version
1.0.0
Runs on
Android, Windows (Android 8.0+)
Offline use
Works offline
Package
com.driftlings.game
Engine
Unity 6000.6.2f1
Last updated

Privacy

No account, server, advertising, analytics or permissions. Progress lives only on the device.

Full privacy information for Driftlings →

Permissions

This project requires no special permissions.

Support

Questions, bugs or ideas for Driftlings?

Driftlings support →

Technical details

Built with

  • Unity
  • C#
  • URP 17
  • IL2CPP
  • Fixed-step simulation
  • Synthesised audio

How it is put together

  • A fixed-step simulation over a bounded spatial grid moves the swarm, with pooled visuals and a shared sprite shader.
  • Versioned atomic saves keep a safety copy; a separate run journal stores every agent's position, groups, size and world state.
  • Run identifiers stop a completed checkpoint from replaying its rewards.

Development workflow

Built through ChatGPT.

Timeline

  1. Version 1.0.0

    APK built and verified on the desktop; touch, haptic and thermal acceptance need a physical phone.

Accessibility in the app

  • A Relaxed mode that unlocks the same story content without time pressure
  • Tap alternatives to drag and pinch gestures
  • Pause, restart from checkpoint and resume at any time

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    • C#
    • IL2CPP
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    • C#
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