Official player guide.

01 / Your first fall

Wake in the Void. You are already falling; your job is to guide the piece, read the next opening and change shape before you reach it. You can take your time learning on EASY.

1. Choose STORY → EASY → THE VOID. The tutorial introduces steering, shapes, zoom, judging and a moving gate in a world with no hazards.
2. Watch the opening nearest to you. Its outline closes around the piece as the gate approaches. Red means your shape is wrong.
3. Steer into the opening and match Circle, Cross, Square or Line. Aim for the center for a Perfect; a pass near the edge still counts.
4. Collect glowing health pickups when you can. The piece’s glow tells you how healthy it is.
5. Reach the wide finish portal. One star unlocks the next Story level.

The tutorial follows your active input device. If you want the wider board view, zoom out; if you want a close view behind the piece, zoom in. The chosen zoom is saved.

02 / Controls & camera

These are the default controls. Shape cycling goes Circle → Cross → Square → Line → Circle. Controller bindings use physical button positions; the game shows glyphs for the connected device.

Steering and zoom

The mouse cursor hides and stays inside the game window during a run, then returns in menus. Keys and sticks take priority, then tilt (when it is on), then touch and the mouse. Moving the mouse again reactivates mouse steering.

Zoom changes your view from the whole board to a close view behind the piece. Mouse and touch keep their whole-board mapping, so changing the camera does not drag your piece. A pinch changes zoom without steering or morphing. Corridors temporarily zoom in and restore your chosen view after you leave.

AUTO CAMERA (Settings → CONTROLS; on by default on phones and tablets, off on PC) pulls back to keep the piece and the next opening in view together, then settles back to your chosen zoom. It never comes closer than CAMERA ZOOM. Every screen flies the same course: a wider or taller screen only adds open room at the sides.

Make the controls comfortable

• Settings → CONTROLS: remap keyboard and controller gameplay buttons. Choose a binding and press the replacement key or button; Esc cancels. If a binding is already used, the game swaps the affected controls. RESET CONTROLS restores defaults.
• STICK SENSITIVITY: 10–200% for analog steering and camera zoom. Below 100%, a light push steers precisely and holding full tilt builds back up to full speed; above 100%, you reach full speed with less stick travel. D-pad and menus keep their usual response.
• VIBRATION: 0–100%: short pulses for shapes, gates, pickups and impacts on supported controllers or, when you play by touch, an Android phone. Set 0% to turn it off.
• TILT STEERING and TILT SENSITIVITY: steer by leaning the phone, or a DualShock 4, DualSense, Switch Pro, Steam Deck or another controller with motion sensors. The way you hold it when play starts or resumes counts as level; sticks and keys still override it. Sensitivity runs 50–200%. On a touchscreen, taps still change shape.
• TOUCH CONTROLS: TAP THE PIECE, TAP ANYWHERE, MATCH NEXT GATE (an assist: a tap changes to the nearer opening’s shape, then cycles if already matching), DIRECTIONAL GESTURE, RHYTHM DODGE or AUTO SHAPE. With DIRECTIONAL GESTURE the first finger steers and a second strokes up for Line, right for Circle, down for Cross and left for Square; SHAPE STROKE LENGTH sets how far a stroke goes. Assisted changes never earn beat marks.
• RHYTHM DODGE and AUTO SHAPE are assists. RHYTHM DODGE lines you up with each gate: tap a shape symbol to morph, and press DODGE when an obstacle’s cue says DODGE NOW; the piece returns to its gate path afterwards. AUTO SHAPE keeps your steering and matches the nearest opening for you on the approach. Each assist has its own leaderboards and personal records, and multiplayer uses directional gestures when one is chosen.
• TOUCH SENSITIVITY: 50–200%. A drag starting on the piece steers rather than morphing.

Menus use a teal highlight, white rim and pointer. Gold markers show chosen options. Directional navigation can move diagonally, follows the nearest eligible control and stops at the edge. Menu Confirm and Back are fixed so you can always reach your settings. When a window opens over another, the one beneath dims until you close it.

Controller name entry

On desktop, use the stick or D-pad to select an on-screen key and the south button to type it. Start submits the name; the east button cancels. A physical keyboard uses Enter to submit and Esc to cancel. Mobile uses the system keyboard.

Results and cinematics

Use the labeled buttons for RETRY, REPLAY, NEXT LEVEL or MENU. Enter, P, Esc or Start can advance or retry where available; Backspace or the controller east button returns to the menu. Any key, click or tap can skip a Story cinematic.

03 / Gates, health & FLOW

A gate is a wall with a shaped opening. You must fit its outline with the matching shape when you cross the wall. The approaching outline around your piece follows the opening you are nearest; it turns from red to the opening’s color once your shape matches.

Build FLOW

Four consecutive successful gates raise the flow tier, up to tier 5. Your multiplier starts at ×1 and reaches ×6 at the highest tier; the gate that raises a tier is scored with the multiplier you had as you entered it. The score multiplier and fall speed rise with it. A graze preserves your streak without counting as a clean pass. A miss or damaging hazard normally resets it. The changing shaft colors and FLOW label tell you where you are.

Read your health

You begin with 100 health. Bright, saturated color and a wide glow mean the piece is healthy. Its glow and spark trail shrink as health falls. Below 35%, the rim pulses red, a heartbeat sounds, the music muffles, and the screen loses color. At zero, the piece shatters and the run ends.

Gate misses cost roughly 8–45 health depending on how far you hit from the opening. A wrong shape always counts as a miss, even at the center. A miss slows the fall briefly, giving you a moment to recover.

Moving openings

Some holes slide horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Aim where the hole will arrive when you cross, rather than where it was a moment ago. Early ones tend to turn around at the crossing; later ones can still be moving. On EASY, a dashed path and an arrival outline help you read the motion. NORMAL and HARD rely on the moving hole itself.

Gate walls on each difficulty

On EASY a gate is a full glowing wall around its opening. On NORMAL only the wall’s grid lines remain, in bigger squares that take the wall’s colour. On HARD you see the opening’s outline alone, with a faint glow where the wall meets the shaft, so read the outline itself.

Two openings, one choice

Some early walls have a second opening of another shape. Either route passes the wall if you match and fit it. The approach outline follows whichever opening you are nearer. A framed opening with corner brackets marks a corridor route.

04 / Scores, stars & progression

Clean passes sustain FLOW; centered passes make more of it. Values below describe the current game tuning.

Story stars

Passes and Perfects are clean; grazes are not. Stars judge the gates rather than corridor bonuses. Earn one star on any difficulty to unlock the next Story level. Scores, stars and completion records are tracked separately for each level and difficulty. Failed attempts can still set a personal best score. Stars fill in at the top of the screen as you earn them during a run; a saved star still needs the finish.

Difficulty

EASY has fewer gates, more breathing room and motion guides. NORMAL is the standard course. HARD has more gates, tighter pacing and more demanding movement. Story courses are fixed for each difficulty, so repeated attempts let you learn their layout.

Music and timing

Gate crossings follow the song’s strong moments. Song energy, FLOW and temporary effects can change fall speed. You never need a beat-timed press to pass a gate. Timing your shape to the beat is the extra reward: while a gate approaches, an echo of the ring round your piece closes in and lands on each beat, and the ring ripples with the song’s kick and snare. Choose (or confirm) the shape as an echo lands to mark the gate; the ring burns whiter while the mark is held.

Story replays restart their song. An Arcade run moves through shuffled tracks without repeating until the set has cycled. Audio delay can be adjusted in Settings → AUDIO → AUDIO SYNC.

05 / Corridors & route choices

A corridor mouth is an extra framed opening in a gate wall. It leads through a boxed path to a differently shaped opening in the next wall. You can choose the ordinary hole beside it or take the corridor for pickups and a bonus.

1. Match the corridor mouth’s shape and enter it with a Pass, Perfect or Graze.
2. Once you are inside in the right shape, the corridor carries you to its exit. Steering waits, its walls can’t knock you out, and it collects its pickups on the way.
3. Read the exit and change into its shape before you arrive. The wrong shape there is a miss like any other.
4. Reach the exit for THREADED and its bonus.

Choosing the ordinary gate costs nothing extra. The unused corridor and its pickups break apart, and its exit seals.

Winding courses and forks

The shaft winds as you fall, and in most worlds it forks: a wall split by bright dividers into two to four openings, left, right, up or down. Each opening leads into its own tube. Steer into one before you reach the wall to choose your route; the opening you are lined up with brightens.

• Main (no sign): the course as it would have been.
• Shortcut (chevrons): fewer gates and a current that carries you to the join sooner.
• Recovery (a plus): no hazards, a gentler pace and health along the way.

Each route has its own gates, hazards and pickups, and all of them rejoin the main shaft. The routes you did not take stay in view beside yours until the join. Rivals and ghosts are drawn in their own tubes, and in DERBY runners in different tubes cannot touch. In Quantum the forks come back to back and the tubes twist around each other. Stars, FINAL STRETCH and the results count the gates you actually met. The Machine never forks; Arcade, DERBY and custom courses fork as they go.

06 / Pickups & status effects

Fly through a pickup to collect it. Most are Health; others change how you meet the world. Temporary pickup and hazard states reset for a fresh run or Story level. A pickup’s glow dims while it sits in front of the next gate’s opening, so it never hides the hole.

The world changes the piece

Several harmless obstacles still move or slow you: birds, fish, balloons, tardigrades, mucus and foliage can affect your line without damaging health. A bounce can still put you in a bad place for the next gate.

07 / The worlds & their hazards

The journey starts with a tutorial in the Void, then falls world after world. Every world keeps the same gate language, then adds its own forces, hazards and atmosphere. STORY introduces them in this order; Arcade can mix mechanics.

08 / Ways to play

STORY

Choose a difficulty and a level. Its course stays the same on each attempt. Finish for stars and the next unlock. NEXT LEVEL continues the journey; REPLAY returns to the same level. The progress line at the top shows the course, turns gold for FINAL STRETCH, then leads to a wide finish portal.

ARCADE

Choose EASY, NORMAL or HARD on the Arcade screen, then PLAY. Each difficulty has its own best score and board. The soundtrack shuffles level songs and the Arcade-only songs; each song is a stage. Level songs bring their world’s hazards; Arcade-only tracks choose a world and can borrow other mechanics.

DEPTH measures how long the run has gathered pressure. Its five-step bar warms from blue toward red. Fall speed, gate density, shape changes and hazards increase; pickups become less common. NORMAL reaches full pressure around 10 minutes, EASY around 13 minutes with a gentler peak, and HARD around 8 minutes. A new run begins at DEPTH 1, and each new step is announced as you reach it. DEPTH continues upward; FLOW can rise or reset independently.

Arcade teaches each mechanic the first time you meet it, from the same saved list as Story, so nothing you have learned is taught twice.

DAILY DROP

Open the Daily card or DIVE IN for the day’s world, difficulty, countdown and leaderboard. Everyone gets the same challenge. It changes at 00:00 UTC; the countdown is your in-game reference. Replaying the day’s course lets you improve your score. Daily progress does not unlock Story levels, and its results do not offer NEXT LEVEL.

CIRCUIT

CIRCUIT, on the title, is a campaign of cups against computer rivals, one of each personality. Choose RIVAL SKILL (EASY, NORMAL or HARD), then a cup: Qualifier, Challenger, Contender or Championship, each a run of races and DERBYs through the journey’s worlds. Events pay 5, 3, 2 and 1 points; points, then event wins, then the last event’s place decide the standings, and points carry across the whole campaign. A top-three cup finish unlocks the next cup for that skill. Progress saves after every event, so a cup resumes where you left it; RESTART asks before it clears one. Medals mark your finishes, and finishing first overall earns a Circuit Winner award for that skill.

MULTI-FLOW: ONLINE or COMPUTER

MULTI-FLOW opens on RACE, with DERBY and CUSTOM beside it, and a remembered choice of ONLINE or COMPUTER rivals. ONLINE searches for other players. COMPUTER starts straight away with one to three rivals at the RIVAL SKILL you choose, and each slot’s personality can be changed: RUSH attacks, WARD plays safe and heals, FLUX switches between the two. Computer rivals steer, morph and make mistakes like players, more often on EASY. A computer match ends when you finish or shatter, with REMATCH ready. Computer play never counts toward online wins, boards or Story records.

MULTI-FLOW: FLOW RACE

Two to four players share a fresh course and countdown. The RACE tab begins searching for rivals. Named colored echoes and progress markers show the other players. Rivals do not affect your steering, health or gates. Normal quick races use NORMAL difficulty, and results stay separate from Story unlocks and fixed-course records. Rivals, their names and their items are drawn as far down the shaft as the gates, and fade around your piece and the next gate’s openings so they never hide them.

MULTI-FLOW: DERBY

A shared endless descent uses the same songs, worlds, hazards and DEPTH for everyone. Close contact shoves pieces. Heated or Charged contact can add a small health hit, capped at five per contact; Charge is spent on its stronger shove. Phase can intercept one contact. DERBY has no health pickups, and FLOW adds less speed than in other modes. The last piece standing wins.

Every DERBY pickup is shared: the first player to reach it claims it, unless it would give them nothing (something they already hold), in which case it stays for the others. DERBY adds its own items. There is no attack button: each one goes off by itself, for players and computer rivals alike, and the item you hold shows as an icon in the middle of your piece.

• SPIKES (Shell): for 5 seconds or one strike, your next contact adds 5 damage and a stronger shove (stronger still on the beat). Spikes can also smash one breakable hazard.
• SHIELD (Shell): takes the damage of the next hit of any kind, from a rival, an item, a hazard, a gate wall, a fork divider or the Machine’s door. The shove and slowdown still happen, and a rival that rams it bounces back twice as hard.
• SHOCKWAVE (Offensive): held until a rival is in its ring, then on the next beat it shoves every rival near you for 8 damage and smashes breakable hazards in reach.
• BEAT MINE (Offensive): held until a rival is close behind you on your route, then dropped for 40 seconds. The first rival through it takes 12 damage, or 20 on the beat.
• HOMING (Offensive): held until a rival is within range ahead. Brackets lock on, then a missile chases it down the shaft and through gate walls for 16 damage. A hard swerve or a sharp fork bend can shake it off, and a hazard in its way stops it. Its target sees HOMING.

Breakable hazards are the solid things and creatures: asteroids, comets, satellites, planes, the alien ship, balloons, islands, germs, branches, webs, gears, pistons, ice, wall colonies, flocks, fish, jellyfish, whales, tardigrades, immune cells and the vessel’s valves. Lava, fire, lasers, electricity, currents, the quantum field, the pulse grid, the Reactor’s parts and gates never break. Phase lets shockwaves, mines and homing missiles pass through, and items never reach a runner in another fork tube.

CUSTOM multiplayer

The CUSTOM tab uses a separate saved preset and the same four-player limit. CREATE opens the editor. SAVE & QUEUE returns to the lobby, and the player who starts the round supplies the shared course. Only game songs can be shared here. CUSTOM works with COMPUTER rivals too.

Spectating & rematches

After shattering in a live online game, WATCH RIVALS follows a surviving piece. PREV / NEXT, Q / E or controller shoulders change the watched rival. RESULTS returns to your result; REMATCH can be requested while watching. When the last available rival finishes, shatters or disconnects, you return to results. Computer matches have no spectating: their results come up straight away.

09 / Menus & settings

Title and selection screens

The title offers STORY, ARCADE, CIRCUIT and MULTI-FLOW, with the DAILY DROP card showing today’s world, difficulty and countdown (DIVE IN opens it). Use the corner gear or controller Start for SETTINGS; Esc opens Settings from the title on keyboard. The Discord button opens the community, and the guidebook button below it opens this guide. QUIT appears on desktop. Any press skips the title’s opening.

In Story, choose EASY / NORMAL / HARD and select a level card. Cards show course information, stars and your best score for that difficulty. Highlighting a level previews its world. CUSTOM sits at the end of the list. A locked world can be previewed; completing the previous one unlocks play. The GHOST button picks a ghost for the highlighted course, LAST RUN or PERSONAL BEST, and LEADERBOARD opens that level’s board.

Pause and results

Pause offers RESUME, RESTART, LEADERBOARD, SETTINGS and MENU. Settings changes apply while the run remains paused; BACK returns to pause and RESUME continues. Results show your score, gates, Perfects and best streak, with stars for completed Story courses and DEPTH and duration for Arcade. NEW BEST marks a new local record.

AUDIO

Set MASTER, MUSIC, EFFECTS, AMBIENCE, VOICE and UI (menu and button sounds) independently. AUDIO SYNC adjusts playback timing from −200 to +400 ms. The game remembers timing by audio output; a new Bluetooth output starts with an added delay. If the sound feels late or early, adjust this while judging against the visual gate arrival.

GRAPHICS

Choose QUALITY or DETECT BEST SETTINGS, render RESOLUTION, FRAME RATE, BLOOM (OFF / FAST / FULL), LENS EFFECTS, WORLD SCREEN EFFECTS, EFFECTS DETAIL, TEXTURES, ANTI-ALIASING (OFF / FXAA / SMAA) and DYNAMIC RESOLUTION. Desktop also offers BORDERLESS / FULLSCREEN / WINDOWED. Available choices depend on the platform.

HDR OUTPUT, HDR BRIGHTNESS and HDR PEAK BRIGHTNESS control HDR on supported displays and platforms. Unsupported output falls back to SDR. DirectX 11 HDR uses borderless mode; the current Linux renderer uses SDR. Start with AUTO peak brightness, then tune to your display when supported.

CONTROLS

TOUCH CONTROLS, TOUCH SENSITIVITY and SHAPE STROKE LENGTH; CAMERA ZOOM and AUTO CAMERA; VIBRATION, for controller rumble or, when you play by touch, the phone; TILT STEERING and TILT SENSITIVITY; STICK SENSITIVITY and the connected controllers; and BUTTONS, where you remap gameplay controls and RESET CONTROLS. Menu select and back always stay on their default buttons. See the complete default controls above.

GAME

TUTORIALS controls lessons, control hints and cinematic skip prompts. GHOST selects OFF, CONTEXTUAL (a helpful previous failed run) or PERSONAL BEST (your best run alongside you). A replay is a reference to follow; it does not affect collisions or scores. GAME GUIDE opens this guide in your browser.

PROFILE

Set your LEADERBOARD NAME and style your name plate: BACKGROUND, TEXT, ACCENT and FRAME with a live preview; RESET NAME PLATE restores the original. Your name plate appears beside your name on the online boards, including scores you set before changing it. PRIVACY has the privacy policy, your player ID (COPY PLAYER ID) and REQUEST DATA DELETION. On Android, PROFILE also opens your Google Play achievements.

ACCESSIBILITY

• UI SIZE: enlarge menus, HUD text and captions.
• REDUCED MOTION: reduces lens and HUD motion and Reactor flicker, removes camera shake, and changes screens at once.
• REDUCED FLASHES: reduces impact flashes, beat-driven screen brightness and Reactor flicker.
• CAPTIONS: text for announcer speech, songs, ambience and sound effects, including muted audio. Some one-shot sounds include stereo direction.
• COLOUR VISION: STANDARD, RED-GREEN or BLUE-YELLOW shape colours, chosen to stay distinct for those kinds of colour blindness.
• REMAP CONTROLS and AUDIO CONTROLS open their corresponding tabs.

Credits are accessible from Settings and include the creator, studio, music attribution and community links.

10 / Boards, ghosts & saved progress

Joining the boards

The first scoring run can ask WHAT SHOULD THEY CALL YOU? Pick 3–12 characters using letters, digits, a dash or underscore. Names display in capitals. NOT NOW turns off participation; JOIN on a board lets you opt in later. You do not need an account; the name is all the boards use.

There is a separate board for every Story level and difficulty, one for each Arcade difficulty, and one for Daily Drop. Each keeps your best accepted score. The results show nearby rows and your rank, while board screens let you browse the wider standings. Custom courses, multiplayer and computer matches do not submit to fixed-course boards.

RHYTHM DODGE and AUTO SHAPE runs have their own complete set of boards and personal records; manual touch, mouse, keyboard and controller play share the main boards. Switching between the two assists makes a run local only.

Offline and queued scores

Story and Arcade can be played offline. Joined players’ scores wait locally when the network is unavailable and are sent after reconnection. OFFLINE · SCORE WILL BE SENT LATER confirms this. Daily can use its cached or offline-derived course; an online submission still has to belong to the valid daily challenge window. SCORE NOT ACCEPTED means a run could not be accepted for that board.

Local ghosts

A ghost is a recorded run shown beside you. CONTEXTUAL helps after a failed run; PERSONAL BEST replays your own best. On the level select, the GHOST button picks LAST RUN or PERSONAL BEST for the highlighted course. Assisted runs never replace your manual ghosts. Scores and gate judgments still come from your current piece.

Published top ghosts

Where available, RACE TOP GHOST on a fixed Story board starts that exact course against its top player’s published recording. A leaderboard score does not always have an available recording. Shared playback needs the matching online service and course version.

What is saved

Story completion, stars and best scores by difficulty; Arcade records; chosen difficulty and zoom; settings; name plate; custom presets; CIRCUIT standings; achievement progress; and queued online scores are saved locally. Steam Cloud carries your progress between PCs. Hardware-specific choices, including HDR calibration and device performance settings, stay local. Imported custom music is session-only.

A live connection is needed for multiplayer, board updates and remote ghosts. When reporting an online problem, include the game version, mode, difficulty and any status message in Discord.

11 / Build your own course

Select CUSTOM at the end of STORY’s level list. Choose a world backdrop and song, ambience, gate pattern, difficulty and gate count, fall speed, pickup and corridor frequency, moving gates, PATH (STRAIGHT to WILD: how much the shaft winds), FORKS (NONE to WILD: how often it splits), screen look and individual hazards.

1. Use the previous / next arrows on a setting, or press its centered value to advance it.
2. Use the layout arrows to step through seeds; REROLL picks a fresh layout.
3. Choose SAVE & PLAY to save the preset and start the course.

Custom courses have their own ruleset; they do not unlock Story levels or submit to the fixed-course boards. Story and multiplayer keep separate presets.

Your music

In Story CUSTOM, choose YOUR MUSIC → ADD MUSIC FILE. Select a WAV, OGG or MP3 in the desktop file browser or Android system picker. The import window shows loading, waveform reading, beat and phrase mapping, and hit / intensity mapping. Choose CONTINUE when mapping completes, then SAVE & PLAY. CANCEL keeps the previous song; an import error returns to the editor.

The SONG row can switch between shipped songs and your imported track. One imported song is held for the current session. It is not copied into saved progress or Steam Cloud, and multiplayer CUSTOM uses only shipped game songs.

If a long stereo track exceeds the decoded audio limit, try a shorter edit or a lower sample rate. A song with clear musical attacks gives the mapper more useful moments for its gates.

12 / Achievements

There are 100 achievements on Steam. On Google Play the same 100 are joined by seven more for CIRCUIT and repeat online wins. Story awards cover completion, Hard clears and three-star mastery, while others recognize scoring, survival and mechanics. Progress is saved, and anything earned offline unlocks when the platform reconnects.

An official solo run means Story, Arcade or Daily Drop played on your own. Custom courses cannot award achievements. The multiplayer wins need at least one other player; computer matches never count toward them.

13 / Find your rhythm

For help, feedback and a place to share the fall, join the FLOWFALL Discord. Include the game version and input device if you are reporting a problem.

14 / The journey beneath the journey

The story lives between the worlds. Intros bring the piece into each place; outros carry it toward the next. Any key, click or tap skips a cinematic. A retry skips the intro; NEXT LEVEL continues with the next one.

There is one ending. The same destination waits whether you arrive on EASY, NORMAL or HARD.