Sky Stack: perfect drops, the wind floors and what three stars really need

Sky Stack is a one-tap stacking game. A yellow crane swings an apartment floor from side to side above your tower, and you drop it when it lines up with the floor below: tap the middle of the screen, hit the Drop lever, or press Space or Enter. You can play it in your browser.

Perfect, Nice or Miss

Where the floor lands depends on how far its centre is from the centre of the floor under it:

• Perfect: within about 13% of the top floor's width on the first level, narrowing to under 8% on the last. The new floor snaps exactly on top, keeps its full width and your combo goes up by one.
• Nice: still on the tower, up to about 40% off at first (about 30% on the last level). The overhang is cut away, so the floor gets narrower and shifts to the side you missed on, and your combo goes back to zero. A floor never loses more than about a third of its width in one drop.
• Miss: further off than that, and the floor falls. You lose one of your 3 hearts; lose all three and the site shuts down.

Both windows are measured against the top floor, so every Nice makes all the following drops harder: the target is narrower and no longer under the middle of the swing. A run of Perfects is what keeps the tower wide and centred.

Swing and wind

There is no timer. The crane keeps swinging until you drop, and it pauses while a floor is falling, so you can watch a swing or two and pick your moment. Each level swings a little wider and faster than the one before: a full swing takes about 4.3 seconds on the first level and about 2.5 seconds on the last, and within a level it also widens slightly with every floor you add.

From Storm Ridge, the third district, the wind joins in: every fourth floor (the 4th, 8th, 12th and so on) swings about a third wider than the floors around it. Expect it and wait for the turn rather than chasing the floor.

Residents

Your score is the number of residents who move in. A Perfect is worth much more than a Nice and grows with your combo; a Nice pays a flat amount.

| District | Floors per level | Nice | 1st Perfect in a row, then each extra | |---|---|---|---| | Harbor Dawn | 6–10 | 16 | 44, then about +8 | | Midtown Breeze | 11–15 | 20 | 54, then about +10 | | Storm Ridge | 16–20 | 23 | 63, then about +11 | | Cloud Crown | 21–25 | 27 | 73, then about +13 | | Skyline Finale | 26–30 | 31 | 83, then about +15 |

Each district has five levels, and each level needs one more floor than the last. The leaderboard (all-time and this season) ranks residents from a single tower, and a tower that falls still counts what you built.

Stars

You earn stars only by reaching the floor target; a run that loses all three hearts gives no stars and unlocks nothing. Finishing a level unlocks the next one, and finishing the fifth opens the next district.

• 1★: reach the target.
• 2★: reach it with at least 2 hearts left.
• 3★: reach it without a single miss. In Storm Ridge, Cloud Crown and Skyline Finale you also need at least 3 Perfects in a row somewhere in the tower; otherwise a clean tower stops at 2★.

The map keeps your best result, so you can come back for the third star later.

Quick tips

• Drop when the hanging floor is right over the tower top, not over the middle of the screen. After a Nice those are no longer the same place.
• One early Nice is not a disaster, but two or three shrink the floor fast. If you are unsure, wait for another swing.
• On the windy floors the hanging floor moves faster through the centre; aim a touch early.
• For the 3★ combo in the later districts, go for it on the first floors, while the tower is still wide.

More on the Sky Stack page, or start building.