Every rule in this game is a word first.
Haenyeo words
Jeju has its own vocabulary for diving work, and this game keeps it rather than translating it away. Each word below is written the way it sounds, with the Korean beside it. The blue line under each says where it shows up in the game.
The people are the haenyeo — the women divers of Jeju, who work without air tanks on a single held breath. The sea is badang.
The breath you take underwater when you cannot hold it any longer. Then you do not come up. "Do not be greedy — only as much as your own breath." That saying comes from here.
▸ The name on screen when you went one breath too far.
The held breath let out all at once at the surface. It carries like a whistle. Haenyeo describe it as the line between living and dying.
▸ You hear it when you come back alive. It is also the name of this game. The sound is written in code, not a recording of a real diver — using a real one needs permission, and we have not asked for it.
The float she holds to her chest swimming out. It used to be a hollowed gourd. It marks where she is, and it is what she rests on.
▸ The thing floating at the top of the screen. The deeper you go, the further away it gets.
The net bag hung under the tewak. Everything she takes goes in here.
▸ What is in the mangsari is yours. What is in your hand is not, yet. Tap it on the home screen and every piece is drawn inside the net, one by one.
An iron bar about 30cm long, used to pry abalone off rock.
▸ The tool stuck through the net.
The goggles are simply called "eyes". Jokswe-nun, swe-nun. There is no air tank — the only air she takes down is the breath in her chest.
▸ Why this game has no oxygen gauge.
A low stone windbreak on the shore. Divers change here before going in, and come out to warm up at the fire between dives. Talk happens there.
▸ The firelight at the bottom of the screen. What happened in the village today is posted there.
A shallow stretch the village deliberately keeps empty. Only divers over 65 work it. Sanggun do not set foot there. So the older divers need not swim far, the village scatters small turban shells caught offshore into it. On Gapado, small turbans under 8cm were put into a stretch 4–5m deep.
▸ No one dives here. You can scatter your small ones. Scattering gives you nothing. The sea there only gets brighter for it.
The shallowest sea, where young divers learn.
▸ Where the first dive is taught.
The whole income from this stretch built the village school. None of it was kept.
▸ What you give here leaves your record. Nothing comes back.
One stretch was set aside and its entire income went to the ijang, the villager who ran village affairs.
▸ Not in the game.
Each village's own written rules. They set which species may be taken, who may go in, and how the grounds are managed. Every year the divers themselves set the number of diving days, the working hours and the minimum size that may be taken, and ban particular techniques to stop overfishing.
▸ Why you cannot keep the small ones. Why there are closed seasons.
What is in the water belongs to no one. It is said alongside "the badang feeds everyone alike" — what the sea gives makes no distinction between you and me.
▸ Why this game has no ranking and no comparison with other players.
A sanggun quietly putting part of her own catch into a young or elderly diver's mangsari, underwater. It is not counted and it is not repaid.
▸ Not in the game. Diving alone, there is no one else's net to put anything into.
The luck of that day, not skill. A big haul is not called skill; it is called good meojeong.
▸ Why this game has no ranking.
Korea Heritage Service, UNESCO's intangible heritage listing for the culture of Jeju haenyeo, Jeju Sori, Jemin Ilbo and Halla Ilbo. The full list is on the sources page. None of it is my own reporting, and I have not had any of it checked by a haenyeo.