OTTERBOUND

Six otters, one raft, and a river that never ends the same way twice.

You do not steer. The river does that. You decide three things, and everything else is consequence.

New in 1.2: it plays on a phone. Upright, the river runs across the top and the console stacks under it, with a numbered badge on every otter that matches its skill chip. Held sideways, the console sits beside the river. Drag otters with a finger, tap a chip or an otter to fire its skill. There is a pause now, and the final boss can be beaten.

1. Who stands where

Your raft is a grid — a front row that takes the hits and a back row that throws stones from behind it. Otters standing next to each other link paws, and every otter's trait buffs only the neighbours it is linked to. A tight block is powerful and fragile. A spread-out raft is safe and weak.

Then a heron turns up, and herons ignore the front row completely.

So there is no correct formation — only a correct formation for what is coming. The game tells you what that is before every bend, and you can drag any otter to any slot while you drift. Rearranging is a decision, not a guess.

2. How hard the raft is pushed

DRIFT · PADDLE · CHARGE. Faster means more distance, more loot and more river-stones. It also means more foes and far more fish burned. The throttle is the difficulty setting, and you are the one holding it.

3. What the fish get spent on

Fish is food, shop, medicine and experience all at once. The raft eats every bend. Fish also buys gear, levels an otter up at the campfire, recruits a new one, and pays for the Cook's stew. Spending is starving. That is the entire economy, and it is why every camp is uncomfortable.

Wrecking is not losing

When the last otter goes down you wash up at the Holt with every river-stone you earned, every building you have built and every unlock kept. Spend, push off again, get further.

It autosaves at every single bend. Close the tab mid-river; the title screen will offer you RESUME THE RIVER, exactly where you left it.

What is in it

• 3 leagues — the Shallows, the Narrows and the Maw — each with its own light, weather and boss
• 6 otter kinds, each with a link-trait and an active skill
• 14 river blessings, drawn 3 at a time after every fight won
• 12 holt buildings, gated behind each other so the river opens up across runs
• 8 pieces of gear, upgraded on the slot — so replacing an item never wastes what you spent
• 3 bosses that summon reinforcements on a timer

Everything is earned by playing. No timers, no ads, no battle pass, no currency you can buy. There is nothing for sale in this game.

Controls

• Drag an otter (mouse or finger) — move it to another slot
• 1–6, click or tap an otter, or tap its numbered chip — use that otter's skill
• W / S or ↑ / ↓, or the THROTTLE buttons — throttle
• M, or the SOUND button — mute
• P or Esc, or the PAUSE button — pause (switching tabs pauses it too)

How it was made

The three river skylines are generated paintings, one per league. Everything that moves is drawn in code on an HTML5 canvas: the raft, the crew, every foe, the water, the banks and the weather. No sprite sheets, no stock art, no engine.

Sound effects are synthesised as you play by ZzFX (© 2019 Frank Force, MIT). The three music loops, one for the river, one for the holt and one for the Maw, were composed as note data and rendered by oscillator. Nothing is sampled and nothing is model-generated audio.

AI disclosure: the code, the in-game skyline paintings and the store graphics are AI-generated, and the written text is AI-authored, disclosed truthfully here, in the game's credits and on every store this appears on. The sound and music are procedural synthesis from code, not generative audio.

Paid, from the same studio

If rafts and rivers are your kind of thing, these are ours too:

• PILOTAGE ($5.99) — bring a fishing fleet home at dusk, every boat on a mooring of her own.
• LODESTONE ($6.99) — you carry four engraved stones, and your movement is their sum.
• DOWSER ($9.99) — minesweeper with no numbers: read the ground with a dowsing rod.

More from CSAF

Core Systems Asset Factory builds tools and games.
More of our work: csaf.itch.io
Also free, also in your browser: CHARGE BARGE · BANNERET: SUCCESSION · THE LAST FLOCK

More free browser games from CSAF

Every one of these plays in one click. No install, no account, and they all save as you go.

• HALFLIGHT — Everything in the vault is decaying. That is what pays you.
• PRISMHORN — You never cast a spell. You cast a rainbow.
• CHARGE BARGE — Drive a storm-powered ironclad up an insane hostile coastline.
• RUSTBLOOM — You never find the key. You forge it.
• THE LAST FLOCK — Your army is a crowd you shape with movement alone — and it dies.
• BANNERET: SUCCESSION — You never move a knight. You plant a banner.
• STARCHART — Every voyage you fly is inscribed forever. The route you took IS the constellation.

We also make the parts

Core Systems Asset Factory builds pixel-art packs and engine tooling for developers. If you build games as well as play them, these are ours:

• VERDANT 01 — Overworld — 239 tiles and four complete 47-mask autotile sets, for RPG Maker MZ, Tiled and Godot.
• VERDANT 02 — Elevation — 149 tiles of top-down elevation: a 47-mask plateau autotile and a four-band cliff.
• MOURNCREST 02 — The Pale Choir — five cultists, four directions, three-frame walks, at native 64px and 128px.
• VERDANT 00 — free sample pack — 64 tiles with one complete autotile, free, if you want to try them first.

Plus plugins and editor tools for RPG Maker MZ, GameMaker, Unity and Unreal — the full catalogue is here.