Frostbyte

About the game

Frostbyte is a small puzzle game written by Srinivas for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. You are a little repair bot stuck on a frozen power station, and the floor is so slippery that you cannot simply walk. Every move sends you sliding in one direction until something stops you: a wall, a lump of ice rock, the edge of the room. The whole game is about choosing where to stop.

Each room has a few glowing power cells to collect and a hatch that leads on. The hatch stays locked until the last cell is in your pocket, and you have to stop right on it to leave. Slide over a cell and you pick it up without stopping. Slide into a rock and the rock breaks, and you stop in front of where it was, so rocks are both brakes and walls you can use once. Thin ice is the trap: it holds you the first time, but it cracks behind you, and if you slide over the crack again you fall through and the game puts you back a step.

There are eight rooms, from a gentle first one that takes two moves to a long final one. After each room the game shows how many moves you took against the par for that room, and after the last one the station hums back to life.

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. There are short sound effects for sliding, breaking rocks, collecting cells and opening the hatch. 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

Think about the stopping point, not the path. Before each move, look along the line you would slide and ask where you end up. A rock or a wall two squares past your target is often the thing you need.

Undo is free. I takes back your last move as many times as you like, so try ideas. Your move count goes back too, so the par stays reachable.

Thin ice is one-way. You can cross it once. If the cells are on the far side and the hatch is on the near side, plan to cross it last.

You can stop on the hatch too early. If cells are left, the hatch only tells you how many; keep going.

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, Srinivas, 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 eight rooms are short.