Voltage Quest

About the game

Voltage Quest is a puzzle game written by Jase for Sprig, the open-source game console made by Hack Club that you program in JavaScript. You are a small robot in a factory with a red-and-yellow wiring look, and the factory has gone dark. Each level is a room or a corridor with some batteries and some sockets. Push a battery onto a socket and the circuit is complete; complete every circuit in the level and the power comes on and takes you to the next one.

The first level has a single battery and a socket two steps away, so you learn the push in two key presses. After that the layouts become mazes of corridors where a battery pushed the wrong way ends up against a wall and cannot come back, levels where you have to push one battery through a long winding route, and rooms with several batteries and several sockets at once, where the order matters because one battery can block another. Batteries can also push each other, so a line of them moves as one when you shove the first. Fifteen levels in all, and when the last circuit is closed the screen says that you win.

The game does not explain itself with text, so the whole teaching is in the first few levels. It also has a skip key, which is handy when a level has you stuck.

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. A slow looping melody plays the whole time. 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. A battery against a wall can only slide along it, and one in a corner is lost. Press K and try again rather than fighting a lost battery.

Look at the whole room first. The sockets and the batteries are all in view, so count them and work out which battery belongs to which socket before the first move.

Chains move together. Two batteries in a row go as one when you push from behind. Sometimes that is what you need and sometimes it is the mistake.

Use L sparingly. Skipping works, but the satisfying part is the push you almost did not find.

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, Jase, 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.

Why is there no text explaining the game? The author left the teaching to the levels: the first one has a single battery two steps away, and each new idea arrives in a level of its own.

Does it save my progress? No.