ERG: NIGHT CHART
Go down alone. Relight the Footwall Lamp and bring the dawn.
Loading the cartridge (512 KiB)…
Saved states last for this visit. Sound starts with Power.
ERG: NIGHT CHART 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 first Follow-spot cartridge, on a Deep board with a battery save. The light from the Dawn Beacon is failing from below, and Erg goes down the old survey shaft alone, with a helmet lamp, a blank chart and his fists. The chip itself watches his light: glass turns solid where the lamp falls on it, the chart fills in only where the light has actually reached, and every survey lamp he relights stays lit.
- Developer
- Avenell Playhouse
- Year
- 1993
- Genre
- Exploration action
- Technique
- follow-spot
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, choose one of three files with the D-pad (arrow keys) and A (keyboard Z): a new file begins with how to play and the lift's descent, a used one continues from its last save; hold B (keyboard X) on a file to erase it. Run with Left and Right, jump with A (hold it to jump higher), dash-punch with B, and crouch with Down: crouching shutters your helmet lamp, so creatures that hunt by light lose you, and Down with A drops you through a girder. Start opens the chart, which shows only the screens your light has fallen on; choose RESUME or QUIT TO TITLE there. Touch a dead survey lamp to relight it for good; the tall lamps also save your file and refill your energy. Glow motes give energy and a hidden lamp cell adds a cell to the bar. Five wardens guard the deep, and four of them hold the survey's instruments. The FLOODLAMP brightens your lamp so that flashed glass bears your weight and nightdamp dissolves when you press against it. The FLARE is thrown with C (keyboard C) and sticks where it lands: it lights photocells that open doors. The ECHO PROBE sends a level ping with Up and C (Down and C pings straight down) and shows a hollow wall, which a dash-punch then breaks. The FLASH is a second burst of height when you press A again in the air. Each warden has a weakness in the light: the warden of the Gogglet Works, for example, is dazzled by a flare stuck under its eye. Gogglets see only ahead of them: crouch, and one that walks into you turns back. If your energy runs out the lamp goes out; CONTINUE puts you back at your last save. Beat the Smoked Glass in the Footwall Heart to relight the Footwall Lamp and bring the dawn.
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-night-chart · 524,288 bytes · SHA-256 c618f8479f7f7f07d92e91676c1dac521ae963b46e48c2c52a166fd44e683fe3
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.