Tide Challenge guide

What Tide Challenge is

Tide Challenge is endless Berth Sort. The rules are the ones you know from the main mode — boats sail straight ahead, matching colors board the freighter, other colors park in a berth — but the harbor is never finished. New boats sail in on the tide, wave after wave, and the waves grow bigger and more varied the longer you last. Your run ends when the harbor jams, and your score is what you managed to ship before that. Tide Challenge unlocks once you have cleared Berth Sort level 15; you will find it under More Modes on the home screen.

The setup

• The harbor is a 7 × 9 grid with five berths and three hearts.
• You can see the current freighter and the next two. Every freighter takes three boats.
• The run ends when a boat has to park and the berths are full ("The berths filled up"), or when you run out of hearts by tapping blocked boats ("Too many crashes").

How the waves work

Each wave brings enough boats to fill a few freighters. Waves grow with time played, not with how many waves you have cleared:

• A wave starts at two freighters' worth of boats and gains one more every 50 seconds, up to five.
• The first waves use only two colors. A new color is added every 40 seconds, up to six.
• Mystery boats join after about 50 seconds, garages after about 90 seconds, and iced boats after about 140 seconds (with double ice later on). See the special boats guide for how each one behaves.
• The next wave arrives on a timer that shortens as the run goes on, but there are always at least 8 seconds between waves.

How boats arrive: every new boat sails in from an edge of the harbor along a row or column and stops when it reaches something. In the early waves most boats arrive facing back toward open water, so they are free to leave immediately. Later, more of them end up boxed in. If a boat finds no space to stop at all, it goes straight to a berth — so a crowded harbor can fill your berths without you tapping anything.

Harbor clear: if you empty the whole board, the next wave arrives within a second and a half and you get a bonus, shown as "Harbor clear!".

Scoring and stars

Event	Points
A boat boards a freighter	10
A full freighter departs	100
Harbor clear	50

A run also earns stars for your harbor: one star at 1,000 points, two at 3,000 and three at 5,500. You can collect at most nine stars from Tide Challenge per day (the day resets at midnight UTC); after that the result screen tells you the daily reward limit has been reached, but you can keep playing for score. Your best score, the wave you reached and the number of runs are saved with your progress.

Boosters in Tide Challenge

You can use the same boosters as in Berth Sort — Undo, Call boat, Extra berth and Freeze — up to two of each per run. Freeze stops the tide clock for 15 seconds, which delays the next wave. There is no hint button in this mode. If the run ends and the game is played with ads, you may get one optional revive: an extra berth if your berths filled, or fresh hearts if you crashed out.

Strategy

Use the easy start to bank points

The first minute has few colors and boats that are free to leave. Clear the board quickly and aim for a harbor-clear bonus or two; the bonus also brings the next wave sooner, which means more freighters while things are still easy.

Respect the berth line

Because boats that cannot find space go straight into a berth, berths fill from two sides in this mode: your parking and the tide's overflow. Try to keep at least two berths empty at all times. When you are down to one, only make moves that load the current freighter.

Keep the edges open

New boats come in from the edges and stop at the first obstacle. A harbor with clutter near the edges makes incoming boats stop early and block lanes. Clearing boats close to the edges keeps paths open for later waves.

Watch the freighter preview

With three freighters visible, you know which colors are coming. Park only boats whose color is in that preview, so berthed boats board on their own as soon as their freighter docks.

Spend Freeze between waves, Extra berth late

Freeze is most useful when the board is crowded and the next wave is about to arrive: 15 seconds of calm lets you untangle the harbor. Extra berth is your emergency exit — save it for the moment your berths are nearly full in a long run, when it can add several waves to your score.

Unfreeze ice early

Once ice appears, an iced boat cannot move until boats next to it leave. If you leave ice in the middle of the board, it locks whole lanes for several waves. Prioritize the boats beside iced ones.