Signal Shift

About the game

Signal Shift is a puzzle game written by Atharv Mantri for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. You steer two agents at once through a neon vault, with one set of buttons. One agent, the one you control, goes where you push. The other, its echo, goes the opposite way: press right and the echo moves left, press up and it moves down. Each of them has a doorway of its own on the other side of the room, and both must be docked, with every signal shard collected, before the level ends.

Walls stop each agent separately, and that is the key to the early levels: push against a wall on one side and only the other agent moves, so you can slide the pair into position bit by bit. When mirroring is not enough there is SYNC. Switch it on and the echo copies your moves instead of reversing them, but every synced step burns one point of charge, and when the charge is gone you are back to mirroring. Yellow cells give you two more charge. Red static is deadly: if either agent touches it, the whole link is lost and you start the room again.

There are eight rooms, from a first one that teaches you the mirror with two button presses to a final vault where every synced step has to be planned. The game counts your moves and restarts, and shows the totals when the vault opens.

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 line of the screen shows the room, the mode (MIR for mirror, SYN for sync), your charge (C) and the shards still to find (S). There are short sound effects for steps, shards, batteries and switching modes. 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

Use the walls. In mirror mode, a wall that blocks one agent is a tool: you can move the other one while the first stays put.

Save charge for the tight spots. Charge only goes down while SYNC is on. Switch it off again as soon as the agents are aligned.

Take every yellow cell you can reach cheaply. Two charge is two synced moves.

Plan before you step next to static. Red static anywhere near either agent counts for both, and restarting costs nothing but time: K is always there.

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, Atharv Mantri, 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.