Underwater Movement and Momentum

Underwater Kingdom Quest has the strangest movement in the library and it is the only game here that people routinely describe as broken before they describe it as hard. It is neither: it is swimming, and swimming works differently from walking in ways that are worth understanding deliberately.

What is actually different

Two numbers. Acceleration is about a third of what the top-down games use, and drag is close to zero rather than high.

Low acceleration means your input takes time to become movement. High drag would then stop you quickly; near-zero drag means you keep going. Together they produce a character that is slow to start and slow to stop, which is exactly what being in water feels like.

Everything else about the game follows from those two numbers. The hazards shove you because a shove matters when you cannot arrest it. The currents carry you because you have no traction to resist with. And the air drains while you drift, because drifting is what you spend most of your time doing.

Steering something that never stops

The single adjustment that makes the game click is to start every turn before you want it.

In a high-drag game you steer at the moment you want to change direction. Here you steer a beat early and let the momentum catch up, which feels like anticipating rather than reacting and is closer to driving than to walking.

The second adjustment is to slow down for arrivals rather than at them. Approaching a pearl at full speed and then releasing means drifting past it; releasing a body-length early means arriving at a speed you can use.

Neither of these is difficult. They are simply not what the rest of the site teaches, which is why the first three attempts at this game feel so much worse than the fourth.

Currents: the fastest travel and the worst accident

Currents are drawn as boxes with animated arrows and push everything inside them, including the jellyfish.

Entering one deliberately, at the right angle, is the fastest travel in the game. A current running the length of a court will carry you further in two seconds than swimming will in five, and it costs almost no air because you are not working.

Entering one by accident, in a momentum game, is how you end up on the far side of the court with no air and a long swim back. The arrows show direction and their animation speed shows strength, so a current can always be read before it is entered - the problem is that reaching for a pearl at the edge of one is a very easy way to be taken by it.

Because jellyfish drift in them too, the downstream end of a strong current usually has a small crowd in it.

The dive rhythm

Air drains faster while moving hard and slowest while drifting, but it always drains - waiting is never free. Bubble vents refill it, and vents are deliberately placed away from the pearls.

That produces the rhythm the whole game is built on: dive out, gather, return. Short trips from a vent, repeatedly, rather than one long circuit.

A player who tries one circuit of everything drowns near the end of it, reliably, because the air cost of the last leg is paid at the point where there is no margin left. A player who treats it as a series of short dives finishes comfortably with air to spare.

Almost nobody finds this on the first three attempts, which is why it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving to discovery.

Hazards that shove

A jellyfish sting costs four seconds of air and reverses half your velocity. An eel lash costs five.

In a normal game the air would be the expensive part. Here the velocity is, because rebuilding speed from a standstill takes time and the time costs air. A sting in the middle of a long leg frequently costs twice what the four seconds suggests.

Neither creature can be fought, and both draw their reach. The eel's trigger circle is permanently visible, which means being inside it is always a choice.

The practical habit is to give hazards a wider berth than feels necessary. In a high-drag game you can pass close and correct; here a correction takes long enough that passing close is how you end up inside.

Reading a court before diving

Two seconds at the start, as with every timed game, and here you are looking for three things.

Where the vents are, because they are the anchors the whole run hangs from. Where the currents run, because they decide which legs are cheap. And where the densest cluster of pearls is, because that is the leg worth doing first while your air is full.

Courts get deeper each time you open one, with fewer vents and more currents. The air carried over from the previous court is what makes a deep run possible, so a clean court pays forward twice - once as the bonus and once as the starting air.

The three mistakes

In order of how often they end runs.

• Attempting one circuit of the whole court instead of a series of short dives.
• Playing it like a top-down game and expecting to stop when you release the keys.
• Reaching for a pearl at the edge of a current and being taken by it.

There is a fourth that is subtler: hovering to plan. It still costs air, and in a game where the clock only runs while you are down, thinking is not free.

Frequently asked questions