Our game · Coming to the App Store
Four miles an hour.
You are on the back of a fifty-seven foot narrowboat on an English canal. The cut scrolls past, the boat stops itself at whatever needs doing, and you work through the procedure: a lock to get through, a tank to fill, a swing bridge to open, moored boats to creep past. Free with gentle ads, or £2.99 once to remove them.
- 8
- taps in a lock, in a fixed order, and nothing else does anything
- 4 mph
- cruising speed, on purpose. Nothing ever asks you to hurry
- 0
- ways to fail. Tap the wrong thing and nothing happens
Quite possibly the slowest game on the App Store.
Every other game in our studio is about speed: a café where the queue gets impatient, a post office where the van leaves without you. The English canal system turned out to be the perfect subject for the opposite, a network deliberately capped at walking pace.
A lock is a procedure
Far gates shut, far paddles down, near paddles drawn, near gates open, take her in, shut behind, wind up, open up. Eight taps, the real order, the real thing.
Getting it wrong costs nothing
Tap the wrong thing and nothing happens. No buzzer, no penalty, no timer telling you off. It is the only game we make where being right beats being quick.
Well worked
A lock done cleanly pays a bonus, and clean locks in a row stack it up. That is this game’s version of a streak, and it rewards care rather than speed.
A Logbook of brasses and roses
Twenty-four pieces: roses on the cabin side, a castle panel, a lace-edge plate, a hand-painted Buckby can, a horse brass, a Measham teapot. Three only appear in their season.
How it is built
Fully native, small, and honest about money: one purchase, no subscriptions, no ads while you are on the water.
Back to all work- Native Swift, built with SwiftUI
- Shares its day, results and shop flow with Crumb & Kettle and Post & Parcel
- Every job is the same step machine, from a two-step mooring to the eight-step lock
- StoreKit 2 for the single one-off purchase
- Plays offline, saves on the device, keeps your podcast running
- All art and sound generated by the same tools as our other games
Questions people ask
- What kind of game is Tiller & Towpath?
- A cosy narrowboat game for iPhone and iPad. You cruise an English canal at four miles an hour and work through what comes up: locks, water points, swing bridges, and lines of moored boats to creep past.
- Can I lose?
- No. There is no fail state anywhere in the game. Tapping the wrong thing simply does nothing, and the only cost of a fumble is the bonus for a job done cleanly.
- Is a lock really eight steps?
- Yes, and in the right order, because that is how a lock works. Shut the far gates, drop the far paddles, draw the near ones, open the near gates, take her in, shut behind you, wind up and open up.
- When is it out?
- Tiller & Towpath is finished and heading to the App Store. Email [email protected] if you want to hear when it lands.