Short answer: walk to the water's edge, drink until your belly is full, carry the water under the PRESS to turn it into salt, then walk onto the blue SHOP pad and spend that salt on upgrades. Then do it again, in deeper water, until the sea drops far enough for you to reach the plug at the bottom. There is no tutorial, no map screen and no quest log; those four steps are the entire game, and everything below is the detail that makes the first run go faster.
The first run, step by step
Eight steps take you from a plastic straw to your first upgrade. Each one below says where you are, what to press, and what tells you it worked.
1. Click once inside the player
Before the keys do anything, the game window has to have focus. Click once anywhere in the picture — on a phone, tap once — and the cursor locks to the view. If WASD seems dead on your first try, this is almost always why. Tab hands the cursor back to the browser when you want to reach the buttons around the game.
2. Walk down to the water's edge
The island is small and the shoreline is the only place you can drink from, so head downhill until the water is in front of you. You are aiming for water deep enough to cover the end of the straw — shallow puddles at the very edge fill your belly slowly.
3. Aim at the surface and hold the drink input
Look down at the water and hold the left mouse button. On a phone or tablet, hold the on-screen DRINK button instead. Keep holding: this is not a click-per-swallow game, and letting go stops the intake. The water level in front of you drops as you swallow.
4. Watch the belly, not the score
Your belly is a container with a size, and it fills as you drink. When it is full you stop taking water in, and that is the signal to turn around — there is nothing to gain by standing in the sea with a full belly. The size of that container is the single most important number in the game, and it is the first thing the shop sells.
5. Carry the full belly to PRESS
Walk back up out of the water and stand under PRESS. The water you are carrying gets squeezed out as salt, and salt is the only currency in Drink the Ocean — there are no coins, no gems and no second resource. Until you press, a full belly is worth nothing.
6. Spend the salt on the blue SHOP pad
The SHOP is the blue pad near the island. Walk onto it and buy. Four things are sold: a bigger belly, extra straws, a mouth vacuum and a pocket whirlpool. They all do the same job in different ways — more water moved per trip — and the order to buy them in is covered in our guide to the Drink the Ocean upgrades.
7. Go back out deeper than last time
The shoreline pulls back as the sea empties, so each trip starts further from the island. That is also why the first upgrade matters so much: more belly means fewer walks between the water and the press, and walking is the slow part early on.
8. Finish at the plug
At the very bottom of the drained sea there is a plug. Reach it and pull it, and the map refills with a different ocean. You are not restarting the same beach — the new ocean is a stronger one, and you begin draining it with whatever you bought in the last one.
If you would rather just play than read, the game is running on the home page — the rest of this page is for the parts that are easy to get wrong.
All ten controls
These are the controls exactly as the publisher lists them, with the ones people miss marked.
- WASD — move. No sprint key, no crouch.
- Mouse — look around.
- Left click — drink through the straw. Hold it down, do not tap.
- Hold DRINK button — the touch version of drinking, on phones and tablets.
- Space — jump. Useful for getting over the lip of the shoreline, not for combat (there is none).
- 1 / 2 / 3 — switch tools. Once you own a vacuum or a whirlpool, this is how you reach it. P is not the tool wheel — P opens settings.
- T — go home. This teleports you back to the island instead of walking, which saves real time on deep runs. Most players never find this one.
- E — open the duck's gifts. The Sky Duck leaves gifts around the map; E opens them.
- P — settings.
- Tab — free the mouse, so you can click the page, the fullscreen button or your browser tabs again.
If the keyboard does nothing at all: click the game picture once, then try again. If the view spins but the keys work, the mouse is captured and Tab releases it.
On a phone or tablet
The game is listed for PC, Android and iOS, and it is built landscape. The touch layout gives you an on-screen stick to walk and a DRINK button to hold, so the two things you do most are both under your thumbs.
- Turn the phone sideways first. In portrait the 3D view is squeezed and the straw is hard to aim.
- Hold DRINK, do not tap it repeatedly — a tap gives you a sip, and a sip is not worth the walk.
- The player below the heading has its own Fullscreen button. Use it: it drops the browser bars and gives you the whole screen, which matters much more on a phone than on a desktop.
- Progress is not saved (the publisher lists saving as “No”), so keep the tab open and finish the ocean you started.
How to read the map
There is no minimap and no depth meter. The sea itself is the gauge: as the water falls, things that were underwater end up standing in the open, and each of those things is a rough answer to “how much is left?”
The shipwreck
The first landmark out of the water is a shipwreck. Early on it is a shadow under the surface; once the level has dropped enough you can walk up to it on dry ground instead of swimming over it. Seeing the wreck out of the water means the drain has properly started — you are through the shallow phase, and the walk back to PRESS is getting longer.
The whale skeleton
Deeper into the drain, a whale skeleton comes up. This is the clearest single marker in the game: when the ribs are standing above the waterline, you are well past halfway through that ocean. It is also the point where most runs start to feel slow, because the distance between the water and the press has grown and your belly has not.
The sunken city
Deeper still, streets and rooftops arrive — a sunken city that was a flat blue surface at the start of the run becomes ground you can stand on. When you are walking between buildings, the ocean is nearly finished. This is the stretch where you want the biggest belly and the fastest intake you have, because every trip from here to the press is the longest one in the game.
The plug
The plug sits at the very bottom. Pull it and the sea is gone; the map refills with a new ocean and you start again with your upgrades intact. Treat the plug as the end of the level rather than the end of the game.
None of these landmarks is a collectible. There is no reward hidden behind the wreck or the skeleton, and nothing to pick up except salt. They are useful for one thing only: telling you how far the water still has to fall before you can pull the plug.
When to turn back
Every trip has two costs: the time you spend drinking and the time you spend walking. Early on, walking is the bigger of the two, which produces a simple rule that holds for most of the game:
- If it takes longer to walk there than to fill your belly, your belly is too small. Go back and buy capacity before you go deeper.
- If your belly fills before you reach the water you wanted, you went too deep for your current setup. Come back after an upgrade instead of pushing on.
- If a trip ends with barely any salt, you are drinking in the wrong place — the shallows near the island refill your belly slowly and pay the same as deep water, per unit.
- Use T instead of walking home. It exists, and on deep runs it is the difference between a fast loop and a slow one.
What changes after the plug
Pulling the plug does not send you back to the start. The publisher lists four oceans beyond the first — cola, lemonade, slime and lava — and describes the next one as stronger. Each has its own look and its own water level to get through, so the loop repeats on new scenery with the upgrades you already paid for.
Two systems sit on top of the loop: the Sky Duck hands out boons you can collect around the map, and achievements are tracked across your run. Neither changes the core steps above — drink, press, shop — but the duck's gifts are free progress whenever you walk past one, so open them with E.
Runs are also ranked on a daily leaderboard, which resets. When this page was written the publisher's board showed roughly 49,900 players ranked for the day, with the top score near 32,295 — that is the scale of the board, not a target. Your own last run is the number worth watching.
How to play Drink the Ocean: FAQ
Do I need to download anything to play?
No. The game runs in the browser from Playgama's player, on desktop, Android and iOS. There is no installer and no account; the publisher lists save-progress as “No”, so a run only lasts while the tab is open.
Why can't I drink any more water?
Your belly is full. It is a container with a fixed size until you upgrade it, and it only empties when you press the water into salt under PRESS. Walk back, press, then drink again.
What is the fastest way to make salt in the first ten minutes?
Short trips, close to the island: fill the belly, press, repeat, and put the first salt into a bigger belly rather than into speed. Long walks with a small belly are the slowest possible way to play.
Is there a sprint or a run button?
Not in the control list. Movement is WASD, and T takes you home instantly, which is the only real shortcut in the game.
Why do the graphics look like blocks?
The game is voxel-based — the publisher files it under voxel and 3D, alongside simulation and incremental. Blocks and flat colours are the art style, and they make the falling waterline easy to read from anywhere on the map.
Can I play with friends?
No. The publisher lists it as a one-player game, and the leaderboard is the only place other players show up.
The fullscreen button is greyed out or does nothing
Give the player a moment to finish loading, then click once inside the game picture first — browsers only allow fullscreen after a click inside the frame. If it still refuses, open the page in a fresh tab; an ad blocker can also stop the player from initialising.
Once the first ocean is down, the next thing that decides how fast you go is the order you buy upgrades in — that is the whole subject of the upgrades guide. If your first run went differently from the eight steps above, say so in the comments on the home page and we will correct this page.