Carve, berm and channel the land to guide a river that constantly rewrites its own course.
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How to play
Water spills from a source and runs downhill, always taking the lowest neighbouring cell. But the river rewrites the land as it goes: where it drops sharply it carves the ground away, and where it runs slow or flat it drops silt and builds the ground up. So the course changes continuously, and steering it means shaping terrain rather than digging a channel.
A fast step — a big drop to the next cell — erodes, lowering the ground behind it.
A slow or flat step deposits silt, raising the ground.
Because elevation changes every tick, a river that flowed one way a moment ago may not now.
You have a small budget of edits — digging, berms and channels — to nudge the elevation.
You win by getting the river to wet every goal cell before the edits or the time run out.
Controls
Desktop: click the active tool, then click a cell to reshape it; use Step and Auto to advance the flow.
Phone & tablet: tap cells to sculpt and tap the controls, the board is fully pointer-driven.
Tips & strategy
Work with erosion rather than against it. A steep section will deepen itself, so a single dig at the top of a slope can do the work of several lower down.
Watch for silting up. A flat run builds ground until it dams itself, which will divert the river somewhere you did not intend.
Spend edits early and upstream. A nudge near the source redirects everything below it; the same nudge near a goal moves one cell of water.
Do not chase the river. By the time you react to where it is going it has already changed the ground that sent it there.
A berm is often better than a dig. Raising one cell to refuse the water is cheaper than lowering a whole path to invite it.
Origins
The physics are real and mutual: water erodes where it drops sharply and deposits where it runs slow, which is why rivers wander into meanders rather than holding a straight line.
The original design makes that the control scheme. You do not dig a channel — you shape terrain, and the river rewrites the terrain as it runs.
That feedback is the whole difficulty. A trench you cut will silt up if you make it too flat and cut deeper if you make it too steep, so the landscape you shape is never the one the river leaves behind, and steering it means anticipating what it will do to your own work.
About Silt River
Silt River is an original terrain-routing simulation built around self-modifying flow: the water erodes and deposits, so the landscape you shape is never quite the one the river leaves behind. It's a free browser game on PlayPendium with daily and practice modes across three board sizes.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
