Arcade games

The arcade has two small games you play on your own, in the browser, with no backend needed.

Ember

Ember is a platformer. A small flame runs and jumps across the night to light a lantern.

• Water and spikes put the flame out; land on a drip to turn it to steam.
• Touch a brazier to light it. If the flame goes out, it comes back at the last brazier you lit.
• Sparks are for collecting, and the clock is for beating.
• Hold jump to jump higher.

Delve

Delve is a top-down cave crawl. You carry a lamp, which only lights so far, through the dark to the stairs down.

• Each key opens one door.
• Water, bats and spiders send you back to the last lamp post you lit, or to the start if you haven't lit one. Your keys, gems and opened doors are kept.

Keys in every arcade game

The game also pauses on its own when you switch to another tab. On a touch screen, buttons appear under the playing field.

Worlds

Each game's levels come in worlds of about ten, each with its own place and ideas: Ember starts in the Night meadow and Delve in the Upper caves. The menu shows the worlds as tabs, each with how many of its levels you have finished.

• The first world is open from the start.
• A world opens when you have finished every level of the one before. Until then its tab is marked Locked.
• Every level of an open world can be played, in any order.

Checkpoints

Long levels have checkpoints: braziers in Ember, lamp posts in Delve. Touch one to light it. Going out brings you back to the last one you lit, after a short pause. What you have collected stays collected, doors stay open, and the clock keeps running.

Endless and Daily

Once you have finished the first world of a game, its menu opens two more ways to play. Each level in them is made by the game from a number (a seed), and every one is checked to be fair before you see it: it can be finished, without a jump at the very edge of what you can do, with checkpoints along the way. If a level ever fails those checks fifty times over, a hand-made level is played instead, and the game says so.

• Endless: levels one after another, a little harder each stage. You have three lives for the whole run; going out costs one, and losing the last ends the run. After each stage you can go on or stop. Your best run (stages, then what you collected, then time) is kept, with the run's seed.
• Daily: one level a day, the same for everyone, gentle on Monday and hardest on Sunday. A new one arrives at midnight UTC. Your best result for each day is kept for 30 days.

Share copies a line about your result, such as "Ember Daily · 5 Oct · 1:23.0 · 12/15 sparks · cognivo.digital/games/ember", to paste wherever you like. If your browser won't allow copying, the line is shown for you to copy by hand. Nothing is posted anywhere.

Progress and best times

Each game's menu shows how far you have got: how many levels you have finished across every world, and how much you have collected. Continue starts the first level you haven't finished in the worlds that are open. Once every level is done, it becomes Play again. Finished levels are marked ✓ Done, with your best time and what you collected.

Best times, progress, your best Endless run, your Daily results and the Sound setting are kept in your browser.

Your own levels and art

Everything in these games was made with the Labs:

• A level you are working on in Level Lab appears in the game's menu as From Level Lab, ready to play.
• Art you draw in Sprite Lab or animate in Animation Lab can be switched on with Play with your art, in the game's menu. Switch it off there to go back to the game's own art. Anything your art doesn't have is drawn from the game's own. If something can't be used (a sprite of the wrong size, say), the menu says what.