Let Them Eat Cake

About the game

Let Them Eat Cake is a small block-pushing puzzle written by Xander Reyes for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. Each room has a sad blue face somewhere on the floor and a cake somewhere else. You are the yellow face, and your job is to push the cake until it reaches the sad one. The moment it does, the blue face turns happy and a door opens where you started. Then you have to walk back to the door, and that return trip is where the speed-running feel comes in, because there is no timer, only the number of moves you are willing to spend.

The first room is just a hallway with a door at the end so you can try the controls. After that there are ten rooms. They begin with a straight line that takes a few steps, then add walls you have to route around, then stone-walled rooms with crates scattered about. Crates can be pushed like cakes but do nothing else, so they work as movable walls, and later rooms are as much about not shoving a crate into a corner as about the cake itself. When you walk through the last door, a closing screen shows the author's credit and a note that the whole game was made in an afternoon, which says something about how much a small idea can hold.

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. Every step has its own little note, and there is a looping tune on the title room and a chime when a cake lands. The game keeps no save, so closing the page starts you from the beginning 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.

Controls

Tips

You can only push, never pull. A cake that ends up against a wall can only slide along that wall, and one in a corner is stuck for good. Look at where the cake will end up before the first push.

Crates are walls you choose. Push one into a gap to close a route you do not want the cake to take, or to stop the cake at the right spot.

The way back counts. After the cake lands, check that you have not boxed yourself in: the door is where you started, so a crate left in the doorway needs one more push.

J is cheap. A restart puts the room back exactly as it began.

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, Xander Reyes, 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.

Is it about the famous quote? Only in name. The cakes here are just something to push; the game is a puzzle, and a friendly one.

Does it save my progress? No. The ten rooms are short.