ERG AND COMPANY
Climb the Dawn Beacon’s tower with Erg, Trundlewick and Spanglejape.
Loading the cartridge (512 KiB)…
Saved states last for this visit. Sound starts with Power.
ERG AND COMPANY needs a keyboard or a game controller. On a phone or tablet without one you can read about the game here, but you can’t play it yet.
1
The cartridge · in the fiction
Avenell Playhouse's single-screen climber for one or two players, on a Deep board with a battery save. Erg climbs the tower under the Dawn Beacon with two champions of the Turning Cup, the mirror-sequined jester Spanglejape and the lamp-trolley robot Trundlewick, floor by floor ahead of a rising tide of dark. The light field is both the trap and the tool: where the crew's lights cross past white they wrap into rings that burn the Gogglets out, and three lights crossed at once make the Overdrive's double ring.
- Developer
- Avenell Playhouse
- Year
- 1992
- Genre
- Single-screen climber
- Technique
- overdrive
2
Controls
| Cyclorama pad | Keyboard | Game controller |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrow keys | D-pad or left stick |
| A | Z | Bottom face button |
| B | X | Right face button |
| C | C | Left or top face button |
| START | Enter | Start |
| Save state | F5 | — |
| Load state | F8 | — |
| Power off | Escape | — |
Saved states are kept for this visit only. 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
After the Curtain Up splash, press Start (keyboard Enter) on the title screen, then Start again to leave the how-to-play page. Walk with the D-pad (arrow keys) and jump with A (Z); hold A to jump higher. B (X) is the lamp ability of the member you control and C (C) passes control to the next member of the crew: Erg flares his helmet lamp; Spanglejape holds a mirror beam across the floor while B is held, and can jump again in the air; Trundlewick cannot jump, but B parks him with his flood lamp lit (B again to roll on) and Up hauls him up through the floor above. Down and A drop through a rail (Trundlewick: Down). Gogglets come for a lit lamp and a touch drains it. Where two lights cross past white the light rings: a Gogglet caught in a ring burns out and pops, and in a double ring it pops at once for double points; pops in quick succession make a chain. Your lamp is your life: a lamp that runs out in the rising tide costs a spare lamp, and motes from popped Gogglets refill it. Clear a floor before the tide rises for a bonus. On each area's second floor a hidden door shows when you ring the light on it; stand at it and press Up to reach a lens room. Beat each area's warden by catching its eye in the light, catch the falling motes in the mote shafts, and with all five lenses climb to the Lamp Room to face Umbramarch for the true ending. Start pauses. A second player joins at any time by pressing Start and takes the next member of the crew. Player 2 uses a second controller, or the keyboard: W A S D to move, F G H for A B C, R for Start.
What is running
When you power on, your browser runs an emulator of the Cyclorama: its CPU, its video chip with the light field, and its Cue sound chip, at the real frame rate. The cartridge is the same 512 KiB ROM the project builds and tests, byte for byte.
erg-and-company · 524,288 bytes · SHA-256 ebf6a641b722d071c7ff5d0692fb04ad8c71550e62d6937690a6d94c3a8ef0db
No account and no cookies. Apart from its own files, the page loads one script: Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and page speed without cookies. The hardware is documented in full: read the HED-0041 hardware and programmer’s manual and the SCRIM language specification. Or go back to the Cyclorama.