UpSink

A drop-and-merge game for Android

Light things float. Heavy things sink. Every merge flips.

UpSink is a drop-and-merge game for Android set in a pond tank. Light things float up and heavy things sink. Two of the same that touch merge into the next one, and every merge flips the way it goes. Sunk things raise the water. It’s free, with no ads, no purchases and no account, and it works offline.

Get it on Google Play

Free. No ads, no in-app purchases.

A run in progress at 9,755 points: a seed pod lined up on the dotted aim line, lily pads, a lotus bud and a seed pod floating at the surface, and a turtle, two crabs and two snails below. The next drop, a lotus bud, shows at the top.

Drop, merge, flip

Touch anywhere in the tank to aim, slide to adjust, then let go. Seed pods and lily pads float to the surface; pebbles and snails sink to the bed. Two floaters make a sinker that plunges, and two sinkers make a floater that bobs up. Merges less than a second and a half apart build a chain worth more points.

Changed your mind? Slide up out of the tank and let go there, and nothing drops. The full rules, the points and the rim are in How it works.

Eleven things from a lotus pond

Seed pod, pebble, lily pad, snail, lotus bud, crab, duckling, turtle, lotus, stone frog and paper boat. Odd ones float and even ones sink, and each shows its way by shape as well as colour: an open notch on top means it floats, a solid notch below means it sinks.

  1. 1 Seed pod floats
  2. 2 Pebble sinks
  3. 3 Lily pad floats
  4. 4 Snail sinks
  5. 5 Lotus bud floats
  6. 6 Crab sinks
  7. 7 Duckling floats
  8. 8 Turtle sinks
  9. 9 Lotus floats
  10. 10 Stone frog sinks
  11. 11 Paper boat floats

Turn on tier numbers in Settings and each creature in the tank shows its number.

Four ways to play

  • Daily Tide

    The same drops for everyone on the same date. Play it as often as you like; your top try counts.

  • Endless

    Drop, merge and flip for as long as the tank holds.

  • Calm Water

    No score and no ending. Anything that stays over the rim for two seconds drifts away.

  • Puzzles

    10 hand-made tanks, each with a goal. You see every drop you get, in order, and can try again as often as you like.

Your Pond and tide log

What you discover in Daily Tide and Endless lives in your Pond, with a numbered plate for each creature and the paper boats you have sailed. The tide log shows each month of Daily Tides: a day you played shows your top creature and score, and a day you didn’t is plain water. No streaks, no lives, no energy.

Put it down any time

Leave in the middle of a run and the tank waits, just as you left it. A puzzle keeps its own saved place, so it never replaces a saved Endless run. In Daily Tide, Endless and Calm Water, the Held and Next items at the top of the tank are your real next two drops; the game never re-rolls them.

No ads, no account, works offline

UpSink has no ads, no in-app purchases, no account and no analytics, and it has no internet permission, so it works anywhere. Your Pond, tide log, top scores, solved puzzles and settings stay on your phone, and Android can copy them to your own Google account backup and to a new phone. A game in progress is never backed up.

Read UpSink’s privacy policy

Play your way

  • Light and dark themes, or follow the system.
  • Sound and haptics, each with its own switch.
  • Reduce motion, set in the app or following your system setting.
  • With TalkBack, the game reads out the aim, the held and next items, the water level and every merge, with actions to move the aim and drop.
  • On a keyboard or D-pad, the left and right arrows move the aim, and Enter, Space or the centre button drops.
  • A short guide on first launch can be skipped, and replayed from Settings.
  • A run at 13,435 points with an eight-merge chain on the score bar: a duckling at the surface with a lily pad and a pebble just under it, lotus buds, a turtle, crabs and snails lower down, and a snail lined up to drop.
  • Play screen with the Daily Tide card for Wednesday, November 4, showing today’s top result (a lotus, 22,595 points) and the note that everyone gets the same drops today, above the Endless, Calm Water and Puzzles cards.
  • A solved puzzle: four snails kept apart on the bed have raised the water to the dashed goal line. The sheet says the water reached the line and the also-try was met too, with buttons for the next puzzle and the puzzle list.
  • The Pond with nine of eleven creatures discovered along the waterline; the stone frog and paper boat still show as outlines.
  • Tide log for November: crabs on November 1 and 2, plain water on November 3 when no tide was played, and a lotus on November 4.
  • Calm Water in the dark theme, with no score and a six-merge chain: a lily pad lined up to drop, a duckling and a lily pad at the surface, and crabs, pebbles and a lily pad lower down.

Questions players ask

Drop the first seed pod.

Get it on Google Play