Botloader

About the game

Botloader is a box-pushing puzzle written by Rainier-PS for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. You are a small robot in a warehouse, and your job is to push every crate onto a marked target square. The twist is the battery: each step you take uses one point of charge, and when the charge reaches zero you stop. Green batteries lying around the room recharge you when you step on them, so they are part of the route as much as the crates are.

The rules are the classic ones for this kind of puzzle. You push, never pull, and only one crate at a time. A crate against a wall or another crate will not move, which means a crate pushed into a corner is lost and the room must be restarted. What is new is that you cannot take your time: there is always a number of steps you can afford, and picking up the right batteries in the right order often decides whether the room can be solved at all.

There are fifty rooms, starting with one crate in an open room and growing into tight mazes with several crates and batteries. When you clear the last one, the game shows a summary screen and lets you play again.

Playing it here

Click Play and the game starts in the page, on the Sprig's own 160×128 screen scaled up so the pixels stay sharp. The top left of the screen shows the room number and the battery you have left. There are short sound effects for steps, batteries, clearing a room and running out of power. The game keeps no save, so closing the page starts you at the first room again.

On a phone or tablet, two groups of buttons appear under the screen, like the eight buttons of the console. On a computer, use the keyboard; the arrow keys work like W, A, S, D.

Controls

Tips

Count before you push. The battery number is also the number of steps you can still afford. Work out the shortest route first and then check it against your charge.

Batteries are free steps. Stepping onto one gives charge instead of costing it, so a route that detours through a battery can be cheaper than a straight one.

Do not push crates into corners. A crate in a corner can never come out again. If you did it by mistake, press K; the rooms are quick to replay.

Out of battery means start over. When the charge hits zero you cannot move; restart the room with K.

FAQ

Is this an official Sprig game? It comes from the public Sprig game gallery, where anyone can send in a game. This one was sent in by its author, Rainier-PS, and it runs here unchanged.

What is a Sprig? A small console with a 160×128 screen and eight buttons, made by Hack Club to teach programming by making games. Its games are plain JavaScript programs, and the engine that runs them is open source.

Does it save my progress? No. If you leave, the game starts again from the first room.