Jelly Drift Game

Nine jellyfish drift in deep water at 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 jellyfish to the end. Between levels the current carries the jellyfish to new places, so you have to keep track of where each one went.

How to play

1. Watch the jellyfish. Level 1 lights one jellyfish, level 2 lights that jellyfish and one more, and so on. A jellyfish can come up more than once.
2. When the lights stop, it's your turn. Tap the jellyfish in the same order. There is no time limit for your turn, and the jellyfish stay still while you tap.
3. Get the whole sequence right to clear the level. A wrong jellyfish 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 the jellyfish where they are.
4. After every level you clear, the current moves the jellyfish. They drift a little at first and further as you climb, and from level 4 some swap places. The sequence stays the same: follow each jellyfish to its new place.

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

With sound on, each jellyfish 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 the jellyfish 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

Jelly 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 jellyfish move.

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

Try Sequence Squares, the same game on a board that stays still, Memory Grid, or play our other free memory games.