How to play
- Goal
- Tap away carved blocks so the moon idol comes to rest on its moonstone altar.
- How it ends
- A level is won when the stones settle with the idol on the altar, and lost when the idol touches thorns, drops into the chasm or nothing is left to tap.
- Record
- The fastest win and the fewest taps for each level.
- Tap or click a carved block to knock it out; the tower then falls as it would. Grey stone and the rock of the crags cannot be tapped. With keys, Left and Right step through the blocks you can tap, Up and Down go to the nearest above or below, and Space or Enter taps the lit one.
- A tap is taken only when the stones are still (the moon in the counters is bright); while they move, wait. The level is won when the stones settle with the idol on the moonstone altar, and lost if the idol touches thorns, drops into the chasm, or comes to rest anywhere else with nothing left to tap. R starts the level again at once.
- Each level's par is the fewest taps that win it. Logs and the moon idol roll, ramps send what slides down them onwards, ice slides on almost nothing, moss bounces whatever lands on it, and a cinder rune bursts when tapped and pushes everything near it away (hold one to see the ring its burst reaches). The clock runs from the moment the tower is shown; only a level's first win in this browser counts for the fastest table, and fewer taps always count.
Controls
| Tap · Click | Knock out a carved block |
|---|---|
| Left · Right | Step through the blocks you can tap |
| Up · Down | Go to the nearest block above or below |
| Space · Enter | Tap the lit block |
| R | Start the level again |
| Escape | Pause (the attempt's time then no longer counts for a record) |
The crag paintings, the carved totem faces, the idols and the timber, granite, ice, moss, cinder and moonstone textures were made for this game and kept in the Morass warehouse; the sounds are warehouse recordings; the crags, the altar's rune ring, the thorns and every effect are drawn by the game. A run is sent as its taps alone, and the records worker plays the fall again with the same physics before it ranks the result. Your progress stays in this browser under morass.totem-fall.v1. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
About Totem Fall
The block-removing puzzle in the Totem Destroyer tradition, set on the Moonwatch crags, basalt towers over a chasm full of mist, where old carvers raised a moon idol on totems of cedar and stone. Tap a carved block and it is gone: the totem tips, slides and topples, and the idol rides it down. Bring the idol to rest on its moonstone altar and the altar's rune ring wakes; let it touch thorns or drop into the mist and it is lost.
The physics is exact and it never asks for timing. A tap is taken only once every stone has settled, and the world is computed by a small rigid-body engine written for this game, the same to the last bit in every browser, so the same taps always fall the same way. A level is a question of which blocks to take and in what order: every level's par, the fewest taps that win it, was proved by playing out every shorter order.
There are 120 levels on eight crags, each bringing one new thing: heavy grey stone that cannot be tapped and thorny ledges, rolling logs and the round moon idol, ramps, ice that slides on almost nothing, moss that bounces, and cinder runes that burst and throw everything near them. Every level was checked against a random tapper and against nudged copies of itself, so a winning line is a piece of reasoning and not a lucky bounce. Each level keeps a Top 10 for the fastest win and one for the fewest taps, and the site replays every run before it keeps a place.
