How to play
Everything you need, in about two minutes of reading.
Short version. Run right, land on enemies from above, collect coffee beans and reach the glowing server-room door. You start with three hearts and whatever you have left travels with you into the next stage. Hearts are not lying around on the map - the only way to a new one is coffee: every fiftieth bean is an extra heart. An energy drink turns your next hit into a loss of power instead of a heart. Fall into a pit and you lose a heart but reappear on the last solid ground you stood on.
Controls
On a phone you play with your thumbs: the left one holds a direction, the right one jumps and shoots. You can hold both at once - and even slide a finger from the left arrow to the right one without lifting it.
| What you want | Phone | Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Move left / right | ◀ and ▶ on the left | ← → or A D |
| Jump | the big pink ▲ | Space, ↑ or W |
| Jump higher | hold ▲ longer | hold the jump key |
| Shoot a spark (after an energy drink) | the blue ✦ | X or J |
| Pause | II at the top | P or Esc |
| Mute the music | menu → 🎵 Music | M |
The jump is analogue: a quick tap is a small hop, holding gives you a full jump of more than three tiles. The game is forgiving, too - for a moment after running off a ledge you can still jump, and a jump pressed just before landing fires by itself.
Who is who
- Maria The hero. She does not write code, but she knows the Wi-Fi password and where the fuse box is.
- Byte The missing coder. He went to ship “one tiny fix”.
- Buglet A green beetle - a walking bug in the code. Land on its head; never touch it from the side.
- Spam Moth Flies up and down. Harder to hit, but a spark settles it.
- Plugsy A tangle of cables with a plug on top. It hops on the spot, so time your move.
- Lint Drone Patrols straight up and down in the legacy attic and later worlds. Wait for it to sink, then drop on it.
- Runaway Loop A little robot on wheels. When it spots you in a straight line it stops for a moment, then charges - that pause is your cue to line up the jump.
- Memory Leak A green drip that drifts towards you at head height. Slower than Maria, so you can always get above it.
- The Great Deadline The boss of world six. It throws deadlines at you. Three stomps and the door opens.
- The Root Deadline The boss of world twelve, in the core itself. Faster, throws two deadlines at once - one ahead, one at its own feet - and takes four stomps. Both bosses are stunned after every hit, and a stunned boss cannot hurt you.
What to collect
- Coffee beans - points, and they carry from stage to stage. Every fiftieth one gives you an extra heart (up to five).
- Hearts - up to five, and they carry into the next stage. You will not find any on the map: hearts come only from coffee, one for every fifty beans, so it pays to pick up every bean you pass.
- Energy drink - Maria glows cyan and shoots debugging sparks. It stays with her into the next stage; losing a heart takes it away.
- Idea crate - hit it from below with your head. Coffee is counted straight away; an energy drink drops out underneath, right into your hands.
- Data block - breaks when you hit it from below, or with a spark.
What to watch out for
- Cooling spikes - ordinary damage, easy to jump over.
- Hot solder - the orange goo at the bottom. It costs a heart whatever your state, and puts you back on the last solid ground you stood on.
- Cracked builds - the split platforms collapse half a second after you step on them. They come back shortly after.
- The drop - in world three there is nothing at all below the clouds, and in world eleven nothing below the stages.
The whole story
On Friday at 5 p.m. Byte told Maria he was shipping one tiny fix and then they were going out for dinner. At 5:04 the lights went out and smoke shaped like a heart came out of the socket. All that was left on the desk was a warm mug and an open terminal with a blinking cursor.
Maria did not call for help. She took the thermos, put the insoles back in her boots and walked into the garden, where the power cable disappeared into the ground. That is how the road through twelve worlds began:
- Bug Garden - the sun still shines here and the beetles are mostly harmless.
- Cable Tunnels - dark, damp and full of hot solder.
- The Public Cloud - expensive, wet and missing a floor.
- Pixel Factory - a conveyor produces avatars of Byte. None of them is real.
- The Frozen Backup - everything is preserved here, including the ice under your boots.
- The Server Room - typing behind the door, and the Great Deadline in front of it.
- The Legacy Attic - a bug older than the company, on planks that give way.
- Merge Conflict Canyon - two branches, both called “final fix”.
- Neon Night Build - rain, springs and a terminal still logged in.
- The Sandbox - test data shaped almost like Maria.
- Staging Orbit - no ground at all, only stages on lifts.
- The Deadline Core - where every deadline in the company ends up.
We will not spoil the ending. Let us just say Maria is carrying one coffee bean and a very specific plan for the evening.
Platforms worth riding
- Sliding drawers in the Pixel Factory cross pools of solder six tiles wide. No jump reaches that far, so the ride is the way through.
- Lifts go up to the coffee tucked under the ceiling, six tiles above the floor - out of reach of any jump.
- Springs in the cloud, neon and orbit worlds fire you high enough to reach what floats above. You have to land on top of a spring to use it, so approach it with a small hop.
Progress and saving
The game stores your cleared stages, sound settings and total coffee in your browser's own storage. There are no accounts and no cloud - clear the site data and your progress goes with it. The Privacy Policy spells this out.
There are no checkpoints inside a stage. Run out of hearts and the stage starts over with three fresh ones - but your coffee counter stays with you.