How to play Treasure Diver
Treasure Diver is a remake of the diving games on the LCD handhelds of the early eighties. A diver climbs down from a boat and walks across the seabed to a sunken chest, while an octopus reaches out over the path with four tentacles.
Grab coins at the chest and carry them back to the boat. The tentacles come out one segment at a time, and a diver standing where one is all the way out is caught.
Rules
- The diver has six spots: the boat, the rope below it, three spots on the seabed and the chest. Each press moves him one spot. The rope is always safe; each of the other four can be reached by one tentacle.
- The tentacles take turns: on each beat one of them moves one segment out or in. When a tentacle is all the way out over the spot the diver is standing on, or he steps under one that is, he is caught and his coins are lost.
- At the chest, each press grabs a coin for 1 point (one per beat). Climbing back into the boat with any coins scores 3 more for the trip.
- You have three divers. A lost diver comes back at 200 and 500 points.
- The beat speeds up through each hundred points and eases off a little at every hundred, and the octopus reaches more often as the score climbs. Game B is quicker and reaches more often from the start.
Controls
- ← → / A D
- Step towards the boat or the chest
- → at the chest
- Grab a coin
- Mouse / touch
- Click or tap the left or right half of the screen; arrow buttons on phones
- P / Esc
- Pause
- Enter / Space
- Start
Tips
- Count the segments, not the seconds. A tentacle with one segment still to go is your signal to step on or step back.
- Wait on the rope. It is the one spot no tentacle reaches, and a good place to watch for a gap.
- Grab two or three coins, not ten. Every coin is in the bag only until you are caught, and the trip home is worth 3 on its own.
Treasure Diver strategy
The timing
The four tentacles move in turn, one segment per beat, so each one moves every fourth beat. Game A opens with a beat of 0.28 seconds and Game B with 0.23, and each point takes 1.2 milliseconds off, with the beat easing off a little at every hundred. The fastest beat is 0.11 seconds in Game A and 0.095 in Game B.
How the octopus reaches
The tentacles have five, four, four and three segments, from the first seabed spot to the chest. A resting tentacle starts reaching on its turn 40% of the time in Game A and 55% in Game B, plus 4 points for every 10 you score, up to 90%. Six reaches in ten go all the way out; the rest stop one or two segments short. Since the chest tentacle is the shortest, the chest is the spot that turns dangerous fastest.
About Treasure Diver
The diver and the octopus are another LCD handheld classic: Nintendo’s Game & Watch Octopus came out in 1981, with divers leaving a boat for sunken treasure, and the Soviet Elektronika line made its own version, «Тайны океана» (Secrets of the Ocean).
This version is an original remake with its own diver, boat and octopus, drawn as LCD segments with the faint ghosts of the unlit ones showing, as on the real screens.
Questions
Is this the original Octopus or Secrets of the Ocean?
No. It is an original browser game inspired by the LCD handhelds, free and with nothing to install.
What is the difference between Game A and Game B?
The rules are the same. In Game B the beat is quicker and the octopus reaches more often from the start. Each keeps its own best score.
How is the score counted?
Each coin grabbed at the chest is 1 point, and each trip that brings coins back to the boat is 3 more. Coins in the bag are lost if the diver is caught, but the points for grabbing them stay.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap the left half of the screen to step towards the boat and the right half to step towards the chest or grab, or use the arrow buttons under the game.
