Simon Says

About the game

Simon Says is a puzzle game about giving orders that repeat. A small grey figure stands on a row of blue blocks floating in empty space, watched by three enormous eyes, and a voice speaking in strange double words ("Your Function/Design is to Solve/Entertain") tells it what to do. The figure cannot move by itself: it only follows the list of commands you put together, and that list plays in a loop, again and again, until the figure reaches the green finish block or walks off the edge into the void.

Each level gives you a few commands (Forward, Right, Backward, Left) and a limit on how many you may use, and that limit is the whole puzzle. The first level allows a single command; soon you need to find a two- or three-step pattern which, repeated, traces exactly the path to the goal. The levels then add new kinds of block: ice that makes the figure slide until it hits something, walls that stop a step, and spinning blocks that turn the figure a quarter turn, so that the same command now points in a different direction. Later levels put more than one figure on the board, all following the same list at once.

There are 39 levels, each with a short name (Lost, Pothole, Glide, Loops, Gauntlet, Mirror, Duality and so on). Every level also has optional challenges, such as reaching the goal in few steps or with few commands; in Challenge mode a level only opens the next one once all of its challenges are done, while Story mode moves on with any solution. The menu lets you switch modes, mute the sound and jump back to any level you have already opened.

It was made by Dylan Johnston in Rust with the Bevy engine and won Bevy Jam #5 (2024), whose theme was "cycles". The music and almost all the sounds are the author's own.

Playing it here

The game runs in the page and is played with the mouse. Click Click to play; the first start loads about 16 MB (game code, music and voices), with the author's menu music playing meanwhile, and then the title screen appears. Click Begin Cycle. Headphones are recommended: the voice and the music are part of the mood. Your progress (which levels and challenges you have completed) is saved in the browser's local storage.

Controls

Tips

Think in patterns, not paths. The list repeats until the figure stops, so look for the shortest piece of the route that, repeated, covers all of it. A staircase, for example, is just Forward then Right.

Count the blocks. Before you press Start, trace the loop on the board with your eyes. Falling off costs nothing but a restart, though, so testing is fine.

Turning blocks change everything after them. After a spinning block, Forward no longer means the same direction on screen. Run the list and watch where the figure turns before you plan the rest.

Credits and licence

Simon Says was designed and programmed by Dylan Johnston, who also made the music and the sounds in GarageBand. The code is released under the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option. The icons come from Font Awesome Free (Fonticons, Inc., CC BY 4.0) and the player model is "Animated Human" by Quaternius (CC0 1.0). For this site we replaced three things whose licences do not allow redistribution or could not be confirmed: the move sound (a ZapSplat sound) with one we synthesised, the font LEMON MILK with Michroma (SIL Open Font License 1.1), and the shader of the glitch effect with our own. The licence texts, those of the Rust libraries compiled into the game, the source and our changes are linked from this page.

FAQ

Nothing happens when I press Start. Add at least one command to the list first; the panel under the level name shows "No Commands" while it is empty.

What does "Disobey" do? Try it. It is part of the game, and the menu comes back after a while.

Will I lose my progress if I close the page? No. The game remembers the levels and challenges you have completed in this browser.