1 The story
Erg’s survey ship came down hard on the night side of a slow-turning world. Somewhere ahead the dawn is creeping over the horizon, and the old relay crews left a Dawn Beacon at the edge of the light. Run, jump and dash-punch across three stages, from an alien jungle to a crystal-cavern mining station to rivers of lava, and reach it before your helmet lamp runs dry. The lamp is your energy and your light: glow motes recharge it, and the lamp-eyed Gogglets patrolling the dark are in your way.
2 Controls
| Cyclorama pad | In ERG | Keyboard | Game controller |
|---|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Left / Right: run | Arrow keys | D-pad or left stick |
| A | Jump; hold for a higher jump | Z | Bottom face button |
| B | Dash-punch (once per jump) | X | Right face button |
| C | Jump, like A | C | Left or top face button |
| START | Pause; continue on the title screens | Enter | Start |
| Save state | Kept for this visit only | F5 | — |
| Load state | F8 | — | |
| Power off | Back to the start button | Escape | — |
Controllers use the standard layout (Xbox, PlayStation and most USB or Bluetooth pads). Press any button on the controller after powering on so the browser notices it.
3 How to play
The goal: cross three stages and light the Dawn Beacon at the end of the last one. You have three lives and no continues; an empty lamp or a fall into a pit costs a life.
Your lamp
The row of cells marked LAMP is your helmet lamp’s energy. It drains all the time, about one cell every six seconds, and a dash-punch or a bump from a Gogglet costs more. Drifting glow motes recharge one cell each. When the music quickens, the lamp is low.
Getting around
Glowing mushrooms launch you high. Branches, catwalks and grates can be jumped up through from below. Thorns, vent spikes and slag cost energy; pits and lava cost a life. Touch the checkpoint lamp half-way through a stage to restart there.
Gogglets
These egg-shaped sentries patrol back and forth; their lamp-eyes glow in the dark. Jump on them or dash-punch them. Stomp several in a row without landing for 200, 400 and 800 points.
The three stages
- DUSK CANOPY
- RELAY STATION
- EMBER FOUNDRY
Reach the Waypost lamp at the end of each stage; the lamp energy you have left becomes bonus points.
Tips: keep moving right and take every mote you pass. A jump followed by a dash-punch in mid-air crosses gaps too wide to jump. A first run takes about 4 to 8 minutes.
What is running
The picture above is not a video. When you power on, your browser runs an emulator of the Cyclorama: its CPU, video chip with its light field, and its Cue sound chip, at the real frame rate. The cartridge is the same 128 KiB ROM the project builds and tests, byte for byte.
erg · 131,072 bytes · SHA-256 31e91f9d0e71b1e1211faee3b2c2908e5bda36c3c164887b2049fb321c144e72
No account, no cookies, no tracking. The page loads only its own files.
The hardware is documented in full: read the HED-0041 hardware & programmer manual and the SCRIM language specification.