Halloween Drift Game

Nine carved pumpkins float over a farm on an autumn night, all alike, and they glow one after another. Tap them back in the same order. Each level keeps the sequence and adds one more to the end. Between levels the pumpkins float to new places, so you have to keep track of where each one went. On the start screen you can swap the pumpkins for nine friendly ghosts over a sleeping town. The game is the same either way.

How to play

1. Pick pumpkins or ghosts on the start screen, then press Start. Your choice is remembered, and you can change it before any game.
2. Watch them glow. Level 1 lights one, level 2 lights that one and one more, and so on. The same one can come up more than once.
3. When the lights stop, it's your turn. Tap them in the same order. There is no time limit for your turn, and they stay put while you tap.
4. Get the whole sequence right to clear the level. A wrong one gets a cross in a ring over it, the one you should have tapped gets a dashed outline, and the same sequence plays again with everything where it is.
5. After every level you clear, they float to new places. They move a little at first and further as you climb, and from level 3 some swap places. The sequence stays the same: follow each one to its new place.

You have three lives. Each wrong tap costs one, and the game ends when the last one goes. The lights get a little quicker each level.

With sound on, each pumpkin or ghost has a soft tone of its own, and the tone goes with it wherever it moves. The game is just as playable in silence.

On a keyboard, move between them with Tab or the arrow keys and tap one with Space or Enter. Escape pauses, and a pause during the lights plays the sequence again from the start.

Scoring

• Clearing a level scores 10 points for each one in its sequence, so level 5 is worth 50.
• The high scores show your score and the level you reached. Your five best runs are saved in this browser.
• Practice mode costs no lives and saves no scores, so you can stay on a level as long as you like.

About spatial sequence memory

Halloween Drift is built on the Corsi block test, in which blocks scattered on a board are tapped in a growing order. It measures the spatial side of working memory: holding where things were, and in what order. The drift adds a second task, keeping that picture up to date as the pumpkins move.

Linking the pumpkins into a little story or a path helps, as a memory palace does for longer lists.

Try Jelly Drift, the same game with jellyfish in deep water, Sequence Squares, on a board that stays still, or play our other free memory games.