Player's Guide

Getting started

The game runs entirely in your browser — no install, no account required. When the page loads you're at a terminal. Type play and press Enter to start, or new game to wipe your save and begin fresh. Your progress saves automatically. If you sign in with Google or email, your save follows you across devices; otherwise it lives in this browser.

Controls

In Chapter 2 (the platformer) Space becomes your jump. In Chapter 3 (the beat-'em-up) movement is the arrows or WASD, J punches, K kicks, and Space jumps over an enemy's lunge.

Coins

Coins (◎) are the main resource. You can only hold three at the start — pick up a fourth and one drops a second later. It's a koan, not a punishment: the limit is the point. Visit the Prior in the North Shrine to buy bigger purses and raise the cap. Lose your coins on a failure and Slop teleports back to the start — annoying, never devastating.

Abilities & the order to do things in

1. Go north to the shrine. The Prior gives you Prompt — fire word-projectiles with Space. Enemies react to being named.
2. Go south into the main dungeon and beat the Render to earn the Dash (Shift).
3. Buy New Eyes (8◎) from the Prior to reveal the east and west passages.
4. Clear the East World — its wall-claiming gate, then the Pixel — to unlock CORRUPT (Q).
5. Clear the West World — type the right word in rhythm at the gate, then beat the Duplicate.
6. With all three dungeons down, enter the Convergence beneath the shrine and clear it.
7. Return to the Prior. Win the game of Joust (first to 3; the higher lance wins the clash) and the portal to Chapter 2 opens.

From there the game changes shape twice — Chapter 2 is a platformer, Chapter 3 a beat-'em-up — but the goal never changes: keep going, keep asking who made you, and find out whether the answer is allowed to mean anything. See the world guide for who you'll meet along the way.

The minigames

The Typer is a typing-rhythm gate: a word appears and each letter has a timing window. Hit the window and the letter lands clean; miss and it garbles into AI-nonsense. You have to produce the whole word to pass. It guards the main dungeon and serves as the west dungeon's query gate. The garbled word is what the world hears when Slop speaks — so missing has meaning.

Sector and its harder cousins are wall-claiming games (in the style of Jezzball): balls bounce in a field and you grow walls to seal off territory until you've claimed enough of it. Space fires vertical walls, Ctrl fires horizontal. The east dungeon's gate uses a single ball; the Pixel boss fight is multi-ball and splits on every seal.

Joust is the Prior's end-of-chapter challenge: gravity-based flapping, first to three points, higher lance wins. The Prior is good at it — it has been here a long time.

Terminal commands

The opening screen is a real terminal. Beyond play and new game, it answers to dozens of words — some practical, most in-character. A few to try:

There are many more — frankenstein, beige, loop, die, stolen, generate — each with a real answer. Half the writing in the game is hiding in here. Poke around.

Saving, sign-in & ads

Sign-in is optional. Play without an account and your progress stays in this browser; sign in with Google or email and it syncs to the cloud so you can pick up on another device. The game shows a single banner ad to help cover hosting and the developer's time — and, by Slop's own account, meals and fun things for an adorable little girl. Signed-in players can clear ads for a while after watching a rewarded ad.

→ Start playing  ·  → Meet the cast  ·  → Read Slop's journal