How to play
- Goal
- Sail the skiff through every rune gate, in order, and across the finish as fast as you can.
- How it ends
- A race ends when you sail through the finish gate; a gate you miss stays the next gate until you sail back through it.
- Record
- The fastest race on each course; every finished race counts.
- After the countdown the skiff sails on its own and its sail trims itself; you steer it between the two rune stones of every gate, in order, to the finish. The lit gate has a beam of light over it, and a gold mark on the ring round your skiff points to it.
- The ring round the skiff turns with the wind. Its red wedge is where the wind comes from: point the bow into it and the sail shakes and the skiff stops, in irons. The skiff is fastest with the wind across it; to reach a gate upwind, sail the green tick on either side of the wedge, about 50° off the wind, and zigzag. Downwind the green ticks at about 150° beat running straight.
- Press Come about to tack (turn through the wind) or gybe (turn away from it, when the wind is behind) to the same angle on the other side; each costs a little speed. The wind shifts during a race: when it swings so your tick points away from the gate, coming about may gain. Sail into the dark ripples a windwyrm breathes onto the cloud for a gust of speed, keep out of the pale calm behind isles, and use the bright cloud currents that stream across the later courses.
Controls
| Steer ◀ ▶ (held) · ← → · A D | Steer |
|---|---|
| Come about · Space · ↑ · W | Tack or gybe to the other side of the wind |
| R | Restart the course |
| Escape | Pause (the race then no longer counts for the Ten) |
The skiff, the windwyrms, the rune stones and the floating isles are warehouse 3D models drawn with three.js; the skiff's sail was split from its hull so it can swing and shake. The music is four beds composed for the game in the Morass music repository, and the sounds and fonts come from the Morass warehouse. A race is sent as your controls alone, and the records worker sails it again with the same core before it ranks the time. Your progress and your best race's ghost stay in this browser under morass.windwyrm-regatta.v1. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
Watch how to play
About Windwyrm Regatta
A sailing race in full 3D on the Cloudreach, a sea of cloud below the floating isles where skiff-crews race the old rune-gates each summer. Your skiff has a dragon's head at its prow and a bat-wing sail that trims itself; you hold the helm. You cannot sail straight into the wind, so a gate upwind is reached by tacking, and the fastest way downwind is not straight at the mark either.
There are sixty courses in twelve archipelagos and four seas: steady dawn breezes in the Dawn Shoals, stronger and faster-shifting wind in the Gale Spires, cloud currents in the Ember Reaches at sunset and the widest shifts under the aurora in the Starwake. The wind swings on a rhythm that is the same every race, windwyrms glide over and breathe gusts onto the cloud, and every isle casts a calm wind shadow behind it, so a course can be learned and sailed better.
Your fastest race on each course sails beside you as a pale ghost, with your time against it at every gate, and on this page the record's race sails too, in gold. Each course keeps a Top 10 of the fastest races, and the site sails the whole race again before it keeps a place; gold, silver and bronze times are yours to chase on every course card. Each sea has its own music, composed for the game.
