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Pinch Points a crab-routing video game

Place arrows in the sand and steer streams of crabs into your castle before time runs out. 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.

How a round plays

  1. Crabs pour in from holes in the walls and walk straight ahead, turning when they hit something.
  2. Drop an arrow and every crab that walks over it turns that way. You only get a few, so place them well.
  3. Gulls swoop in and eat crabs. One that reaches your castle carries off half your score.
  4. The tide is the clock Gulls come twice as fast in the last 30 seconds, and when the wave arrives the highest score wins.

What's in the box

The multiplayer lobby: five friends in one game, the round's settings, and the lobby chat

Bring your friends

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

Up to six players, AI to fill in for missing players, a chat while you wait, and room for anyone else to watch.

$ pinch-points arena --seat ai:easy --open 1
Waiting for 1 bot. Start it with:

  pinch://127.0.0.1:47710/H4TN-C2LV

$ python3 greedy.py pinch://127.0.0.1:47710/H4TN-C2LV

Write your own bot

A bot is a program you run yourself, in any language: it connects over TCP, reads the board each tick and answers with a move. The game never runs anyone's code.

Play it against the game's AI, run a cup between friends' bots, or play it beside you on the couch or at a LAN party.

A whole bot to start from (one file of plain Python) · The protocol

Every loose crab on the beach taking one player's colour and running for their castle
Score a molting crab and every loose crab 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.
The landing menu, a still postcard of the beach
Eight languages, and a beach that keeps moving while you decide.