Skip Stones: A New Pond Opens at the Games Center

There is a new pond at the edge of the Games Center, and it is asking one simple question: how many times can you make a stone skip?

Skip Stones is live today at /games/skip-stones. Your active pet crouches on the shore, you pull back and flick, and the whole flight plays out on the water while the skips count up. It takes ten seconds to throw a stone and about a minute to play a full round, which is exactly the point.

How it works

• Aim: press on the pond and pull back toward you, like a slingshot. Further back is more power; left or right sets the direction.
• Release: while you hold, a meter sweeps from low to high. Let go when the needle is on the gold mark, which is the flat, fast release that skips best. The mark slides as you pull harder, and after every throw the meter freezes for a moment to show you exactly how close you were.
• Read the pond: wind and waves change every day at midnight, and everyone throws on the same water, so today's leaderboard is a fair fight. A headwind steals pace, a crosswind bends your stone, and glassy days are for personal bests.

Each play hands you three stones, and you get three plays a day (VIP members get two more). Most stones are Flat, some are heavier Round stones that fly further but skip less, and about one in six is a rare Glimmer stone whose score counts double.

Scoring, par and streaks

The board ranks your best single stone of the day. Skip through one of the three floating lily rings for +3, reach the far bank for +5, and hit par, 8 skips, on any stone to add today to your Par Streak. Streaks of 3, 7, 14 and 30 days pay a bonus on the day you reach them.

Coins are paid by your best stone of each play, from 15 MPC for a plop to 180 MPC for a 20-skip throw, plus 5 MPC for every lily ring. Your pet earns XP with every play, and a red buoy floats exactly where your best-ever stone sank, so you can see what you are chasing. Your friends' best stones show up as faint buoys too.

The Golden Skipper

Skip Stones has its own all-time trophy in the Trophy Case: The Golden Skipper, for the most skips in a single throw. It has been claimed already, and it is very much up for grabs.

The full rules, reward tiers and a few tips from the shore are in the Skip Stones wiki article. Go find your rhythm on the mark.