Drift

About Drift

Drift is a small push-your-luck puzzle played with a deck of abstract cards. Every card carries three traits: a colour, a shape and a pip count from one to three. A market at the top offers a few cards; you pick one and play it onto one of three lanes. A chain may start with any card, but each card after that must change exactly one trait from the card before it: same shape and pips in a new colour, for example, or the same colour and shape with one more pip.

When you bank a chain it scores its length squared, so a chain of eight is worth far more than two chains of four. The catch is in the deck. Decay cards hidden in it cut your longest live chain in half when they come up, and a counter shows how many are left. Rare Prism cards are wild and link to anything. Each turn is a choice between pushing a chain longer and banking it before the decay lands.

The Daily Puzzle is one numbered deck, seeded so that everyone gets the same one, with a Wordle-style result to share and a streak that feeds Mastery ranks. Journey has 30 hand-tuned puzzles across three regions with up to three stars each, and Endless deals random decks with no streak.

Drift is made by Nicholas Larson and came out on the App Store in July 2026. It has no ads, no accounts and no tracking, works offline and is colour-blind friendly. It suits players who like short scoring puzzles with a bit of risk, more than pure deduction.

How to play Drift

1. Open Daily Puzzle to get the day's numbered deck.
2. Pick a card from the market and play it onto one of the three lanes.
3. Extend a chain only with a card that changes exactly one trait: colour, shape or pip count.
4. Bank a chain to score its length squared, before a Decay card halves your longest live chain.
5. Play through the deck, share your result and come back the next day.

Screenshots

Tips

• Keep the three lanes on different traits so most market cards fit somewhere.
• Watch the Decay counter: when few cards are left and decay is still due, bank your longest chain.
• Save a Prism wildcard to rescue a long chain rather than starting a new one.
• Because scores are squared, one long chain usually beats several short ones; bank short chains only to clear a lane.

Questions