Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 05:17 am
You Must Build A Boat – Action Game Review
You Must Build A Boat is a Action/Roleplaying game from EightyEight Games LTD, first launched in 4th June 2015.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,807+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes You Must Build A Boat Stand Out
" * – A truly superb mash-up of match-three and endless runner that’s unique on mobile and thoroughly addictive. Buy it" – Stuff Magazine
" * – Makes the original game feel like a demo. It's absurdly fun and nearly impossible to put down." – Touch Arcade
" ½ Gold Award – Building a boat will indeed become the most important task in your life." – Game Informer
" ½ – We will gladly build a boat again and again." – Gamezebo
You must build a boat.
You must spring out of bed.
You must bargain with the lizardman.
You must heed your undead navigators.
You must slide rows or columns of tiles on a 6×8 grid.
You must match at least 3.
You must run to the right.
You must focus intently on 2 areas of the screen simultaneously.
You must match keys to unlock chests and swords to attack.
You must literally collect your thoughts and trade them for dragons.
You must not dally.
You must not be too hasty.
You must voluntarily ramp up the difficulty by taking on multiple quests at once.
You must incrementally reach your goals. You must build a boat.
You must try again.
You must try again x5.
You must win every time, even when you don’t.
You must remain optimistic.
You must upgrade your magic staff.
You must occasionally stop playing to allow for your hand to uncramp.
You must take credit for random chain combos you made no effort to arrange.
You must trust a blue bean man to make dangerous investments with your money.
You must forget about the blue bean man.
You must mind the asp.
You must reconcile that despite the game’s title, you begin your journey in possession of what is, in no uncertain terms, already a boat.
You must build a boat.
You must go all-in on the retro aesthetic.
You must trade junk for gold with the voidorb.
You must pray for salt.
You must consume fish and tomatoes for time.
You must venture through hell.
You must disarm traps like your life depends on it.
You must make an offering at the chapel.
You must rally the Fantasy Union and the Undead Buddies to your cause.
You must weigh anchor and methodically yet joyously hop in sync with your entire crew.
You must feign interest in critiquing the gardener’s work.
You must look up at the clock and wonder how it’s so late already.
You must build a boat.
You must build a boat!
YOU MUST BUILD A BOAT!!!
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, You Must Build A Boat is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 11th November 2019
Recent improvements include:
1.6.0 Changes:
- Extra Skins – New skins to unlock in Daily Challenges
- Skin Manager – Change your character skins
- Localisation. Hello World!
- Improved Resolution handling
- Performance enhancements & bug fixing
- View your achievements in game
Download & Availability
You Must Build A Boat is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get You Must Build A Boat on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
One of the best games of all time! We hope Luca makes a new game sometime.
Ive had this game for a few years and its such a fun tile matching game that we always come back to. Its great to pick up and then put back down any time.
Fantastic game, great sound and music. Very engaging , one of our favorite mobile games.
How do we access skin manager.
Simple fun. The music in this game is awesome. The song that plays during the actual dungeon run, should it ever be played by a real heavy metal band, it would be an anthem. We have opened this game just to listen to that song before. :-).
Ive been playing this game nearly since it came out back in 2015. Not consistently – but every time we want something exciting and fast paced, yet simple to understand, we always come back to this game. We promise you will enjoy every second.
Ive bought this three times so far. Twice on two separate android accounts and once on apple. Worth every penny every time.
We already neat this game on steam, but love it so much that we bought it for our phone as well.
A great puzzle RPG. A great sequel to 10000000. Great music. Great replyability.
YMBAB is a great game! Its got challenge, interesting characters, fun interactions, loot, and much more. We just wish it had more content and more explanation to an extent. For example, are the monsters we can recruit at the Beastiary randomized each run? Ive completed the game many times, and wasnt able to complete all the combos. Other than that, its a great game with lots more potential, even years after its release.
Quality is what it is but for an all around game its fun, annoying sometimes but fun.
The game seems a little dry at first but once you get into the game it really takes off. Bye this game is extremely addictive.
Really fun, tiles all do different things when you match them by sliding rows and columns. Unlock upgrades and different merchants.
We love the retro look and feel, and we REALLY enjoy this game.
We love this game so much! But there is a glitch that allows you to move two or more tiles at once without the match processing. What we mean by that is there can be a possible pair of three. But above or below that row, you can quickly move a tile of the same kind to make it a pair of four or higher. We can admit that we have used this glitch before, but it was for the get two five in a row matches it was extremely hard for us to beat. Thank you for taking your time to read this review, if you did.
This is one of our most favorite phone titles. The loop is super addictive! However, after a point It will crash after about 30 seconds into a run. Im on an iPhone 11 and Im on the hall stage. Ive played (and finished) the entire game once before but this is a new phone and that was before the update.
The game is fun and challenging. However, there are a lot of times where we wanted to just play the primary part of the game, not wait for rewards or unskippable scenes or the player-character to move across the ship. All that seems superfluous and does not seem to contribute to the gameplay. Maybe that was for a free version but as a paid game this feels unstreamlined.
This game is not ver compelling, we dont see the draw. We do better randomly flicking the board around than actually being strategic. The main storyline is not really there? Its just an average candy crush knockoff loosely tied together by a boat.
The game keeps crashing. Stay away until the developer fixes it.
Match-3 puzzle rpg featuring tons of content and progression, cool lo-fi graphics, and addictive gameplay. You Must Get This Game.
This game is difficult and fast paced. Our wife watched us struggling with the game and asked to try it. She had a hard time too but we ended up playing it together and had a blast! Its hard to see every potential match and its easy to get in deer in the headlights moments but playing it together we accomplished greatness. We use an iPad Pro 12 so we lay in bed on our tummies like kids and play this. Im not sure the developer has heard of it being played like that. The App Store should feature it as a 2 play on one device game but your moves can mess up the others plans so usually one of us is the primary player and when one sees a great match set-up, its time to take over. Sometimes we both freeze up and spin a row blindly hoping to set up others matches. We hope we arent the only ones that have fun playing this as co-op. There is a magic to the boat and music that really sparks the kind of imagination that many old school games did. We hope to learn of a sequel to this one.
We have played this game three or four times (from start to finish). We always wait a few months before we go back at it again. We see that some people think its a bit hard, but we like how frustrating it can be. We are good at fast-paced matching games though. It definitely helps you pass the time if you are bored – we have played it on long flights on multiple occasions. Its simple, but still entertaining.
We've started it over twice now to play at harder levels. Too much fun.
Are there any plans to implement iCloud support for saving game progress in case of formatting device or switching to another so there's no need to play from the beginning.
Fun puzzle game that takes seconds to learn and will keep you playing for hours. Great for casual gamers and hardcore puzzle game fans. This game mixes an element of RPG, match three tile game, and strategy all in one. We recommend this game highly.
This is s Super fun games. Its like candy crush but with so many different aspects and elements to it. An amazing game that deserves a lot of attention.
Simple fun. The music in this game is awesome. The song that plays during the actual dungeon run, should it ever be played by a real heavy metal band, it would be an anthem. We have opened this game just to listen to that song before. :-).
This game has been a bigger headache than any other match 3 game Ive ever played. Some would say thats good, and we definitely think that has its place, but we think this game would really benefit from an easy mode. Some people like perpetual ramping-up difficulty, but every now and again we just want to have some mindless fun and wreck shop in a dungeon. A zen mode unlocked after the main campaign could be an alternative. At this rate, we feel like Im going to reach a point where this game becomes too frustrating to be fun to play.
The game is good but we dont think its worth 3 dollars. You match tiles to attack enemies and increase your boat size. This game should honestly be .99 cents.
First let us just say that we really do enjoy the game. It is quick paced and fun to upgrade your boat through challenges and your equipment through loot you find in the runs. Good fun. But we really dislike not being able to see the stats of our equipment! We dont remember which we should upgrade next. So you end up never feeling like you upgraded anything. Chests should NEVER push you off the screen. It should be a break for the player to rest a second and then move on. Instead all the keys will magically become rare drops and you need TWO matches to clear a chest. Aaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh. We die more by chest than anything else. Very frustrating.
Or at least get everything out of the way during the tutorial. Third run and Im still getting annoying on screen text that we cant skip. Totally unnecessary.
IOS has scrolling that can detect amount of force, this makes it easier for those with trouble in their joints to scroll across. You don't implement this. Additionally, if you tap an item, you use the item–you cannot slide the row/column from there. Again, a frustrating accessibility issue. Allow intent to match the action on the screen, and this would be a great game. As it is, this is the sequel lacking any accessibility improvements.
We were excited about purchasing this game after hearing and reading lots of good things, but after 10 minutes we already regretted it. Its a simple matching puzzle with some fluff thrown in to make you feel as if you are upgrading and getting better. Its actually quite a boring game after a while, and unfortunately we bought both versions.
Shouldnt even come up in a match 3 search. The difficult mental shift to these…alternative…marching mechanics makes the game unfun.
Sadly this game isnt what people made it out to be. As others have stated there is little strategy involved and when you just randomly swipe quickly you seem to do better than if you were trying to strategize.
It looks like a match 3. Everyone says its a good match game. It is neither.
Only took somewhere in the 5-hr range, but we wish there were more games like this.
This app incorporates RPG, match 3 and old school graphics for an immersive, fun videogame experience. No in-app purchases! Love it.
This game. This game is hard to stop playing. We just played for like two hours and we want to keep playing but we can't.
Love it. Much better replayability than we would have expected, too.
We're a game snob, and we'll say this is the best mobile game you can buy. It's a single purchase, no spamming to pay and play. The sound track is awesome. The gameplay reels you in to just get a little further. Easy to pick up, near impossible to master.
We really enjoy this game as well as its predecessor, 10,000,000. Challenging enough to keep it interesting but fun enough to play to completion. We like the simplicity of the gaming mechanism and that it correlates to a more interesting "story". We also play Puzzles and Dragons a lot and both games are handy to play a level or two while killing time. We've played this one trough a couple times since it came out and we still like. Bonus points for the retro graphics and little bits of humor throughout.
Just beat this game and loved every minute. 100% worth the cost of the game.
This game is amazing. We wish there was more! It's not to difficult or easy. One of our favorite games.
This game is addicting and fun. We cannot find a flaw about it. This game in our opinion should be worth a dollar more.
Very addicting! Isn't another lame Candy Crush clone, its the only tile matching game we ever had fun with! Awesome game.
Game is great and is challenging, so we never want to stop playing it. Great time waster! Very good game if you are going to put in the time. Looking forward to another game in the series.
The game builds on the charm of the previous game. The graphics are the same as the first game, yet, it is still a new experience. It takes a little patience but it is rewarded by a sense of accomplishment when one completes the game. Yes, it is a time waster. It is also a lot of fun. We have now completed the game twice. That second time the difficulty level is increased. This made it more challenging. We do not know how many difficulty levels there are. We enjoyed it even more the second time. Good replay value.
Addicting and engaging!!! Really worth the purchase. Found ourselves looking to play whenever we had a few minutes of time between things.
We're upset now that we beat it. We guess we'll accept the challenge and restart lol.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.6.1097
- Size: 114.57 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PT, RU, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: EightyEight Games LTD
Last updated: 11th November 2019 | Genre: Action, Roleplaying | Developer: EightyEight Games LTD