Pinch Points: a crab-routing video game

🦀 Pinch Points 🦀 a crab-routing video game

Place arrows in the sand and steer streams of crabs into your castle before the tide comes in. One to six players, on the couch or over the wire.

macOS · Linux

curl -fsSL https://agourlay.github.io/pinch-points/install.sh | sh

Installs to ~/.local/bin · Read the script

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agourlay/pinch-points/master/site/install.ps1 | iex

Installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs and adds it to your PATH · Read the script

Or download a release, or with Rust: cargo install --locked pinch-points

Trouble installing?

Linux: The prebuilt game needs glibc 2.39 or newer: Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13, Fedora 40 or later. On an older system it stops with GLIBC_2.39 not found; cargo install builds one that fits. If it stops on error while loading shared libraries, install the one it names (ALSA, udev, xkbcommon) from your distribution.
macOS: The game is not signed, so a copy downloaded in the browser is blocked on first launch. Allow it under System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway, or run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine pinch-points. The curl command avoids this.
Windows: SmartScreen may warn about a downloaded copy: choose More info, then Run anyway. The PowerShell command avoids this.

What's in the box

Tide Pool 100 solo puzzles
Turf War 2-6 on one couch
Beach Lobby 6 over LAN
Driftwood level editor
Beach Day score attack
Daily Challenge same for everyone
Replays shareable as text
50 trophies to go after

The Beach Lobby: five friends at one beach, the round's settings, and the lobby chat

Bring your friends

Host a beach and it shows up on every machine on the same network. Nobody types an address and nobody makes an account: pick the beach, press Enter, you are in.

Up to six players, AI to fill the empty seats, a chat while you wait, and room for anyone else to watch.

Every loose crab on the beach taking one player's colour and running for their castle — Bank a molting crab and the whole beach runs to you for ten seconds.

A turnstile log splitting a stream of crabs between a kelp lane and a pool road — Turnstiles split the stream. Kelp stops gulls. Pools slow everything down.

The stage list, cleared stages filled gold — A hundred puzzles, each proved solvable with exactly the arrows it gives you.