Boxxod

About the game

Boxxod is a small puzzle game written by Kokonico for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. The idea fits in one line: you do not move the red cube, you move gravity. Press a direction and the cube, together with every grey box in the room, falls that way until something stops it. The goal is to make the cube come to rest on the green square.

That sounds easy until the room fills up. Grey boxes stack against the walls and against each other, so each tilt rearranges the whole room, and a box that ends up in the wrong corner can block the only way to the goal. Black crossed boxes never move at all; they are fixed blocks that you can use as brakes. A level that looks empty can still need five or six tilts in exactly the right order, because the cube only counts as arrived when everything has stopped and it is sitting on the green square, not when it slides over it.

There are twenty-two levels. The first two are two-move warm-ups that teach the idea, then the rooms grow wider and the box piles heavier, up to levels that take more than a dozen tilts. A small counter in the top-left corner shows how many moves you have used on the level, and the level number sits at the bottom. After the last room the game shows how many moves you took in total and how long it took, with a short tune, and I plays it again from the start.

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 title screen explains the controls in three lines and waits for I. There are short sound effects when the room settles and when you reach the goal, and a tune on the final screen. The game keeps no save, so closing the page starts you at the first level 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

Think in stops, not steps. Each key press is a whole slide. Before you press, follow the cube and every box in your head until each one hits something.

Boxes are tools. A box in the right place is a wall for the cube. Sometimes the first tilt is only there to park a box where the third tilt will need it.

Restart is free. K puts the level back and costs nothing but the move counter, so try an idea, and if the room is jammed start over.

The goal is not a trap door. Sliding across the green square does not count; the cube has to stop on it.

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, Kokonico, 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. The levels are short and the whole game fits in one sitting.

How many levels are there? Twenty-two.