SWELL PEAKS IN2:18
GRIPS
FREE SWIME grabs the nearest stipe
FLOWSLACK
KICK
KELP
The canopy is a ceiling of ropes. Take one in your fins and it will carry you; let go at the top of the swing and it will throw you. Still water gives you a metre a second. The surge gives you six — and it rips you off anything you are holding. Get down the canyon and onto the spawning ground before the swell peaks.
The current waits.
The stipe, the light and the tide are where you left them.
Everything you touch is either holding you or swinging you.
- A / D · ← →
- Swim. With a stipe in hand this becomes a pump: push at the bottom of the arc and the whole kelp whips.
- W / S
- Swim up and down. On a stipe, W climbs hand over hand toward the anchor and S slides back down.
- E
- Take the nearest stipe, or let go. You are a point on its rope — it carries your weight and shows every bit of strain.
- SPACE
- Kick. Three charges. Kicking while holding lets go as it throws you, which is how you cross the long reach.
- SHIFT
- Go limp. A loose grip is a stouter grip, but you cannot swim.
- M · ESC · H
- Mute / pause / these notes.
The FLOW bar is the swell. Past the red notch a surge will take you off whatever you are holding, so let go before it arrives and ride it across. Below 23 m the flow reverses: the same surge now shoves you back up the canyon. The pale stipes in the dead grove are brittle — swing hard on one and it parts. Predators follow the disturbance you leave; the DISTURBANCE meter shows how loud you are.
Still water.
The canyon keeps what it catches.
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