Afterimage

A puzzle-platformer where each take you play is recorded, and when time rewinds your earlier takes play back beside you, holding plates and standing in as stepping stones.

Date: 2026-10-14 Genre: puzzle-platformer Status: Playable build

Concept

You have a few seconds per take to cross a small stone room. Press LOOP and time snaps back to the start. Your last take turns into a cyan echo that repeats every step you made while you play alongside it. A single room is a short job list: one of you holds the door, one of you is the ladder, and the live you walks out.

How to play

Reach the green exit portal in each of the seven rooms. Move with the arrow keys or A/D and jump with Space, W or Up. Press E or Enter to LOOP, which saves the take as an echo and rewinds. Z or Backspace erases the last echo, R resets the room, and P or Esc pauses. With a mouse, click the UNDO, RESET and LOOP buttons in the top bar. On a phone, use the ◀ ▶, JUMP and LOOP pads.

The take clock stays frozen until you move, so you can plan. When it runs out, the take is saved as an echo automatically. If you are already at the room's echo limit, it is thrown away instead. Touching spikes restarts the current take and keeps your echoes. There is no game over. You can get stuck, though, so UNDO and RESET are always in reach.

Core mechanics

• Each echo copies its take's position frame by frame. If you stopped and pressed LOOP early, the echo stands on that spot for the rest of every later take.
• Echoes are solid on top: you can land on an echo's head and it carries you when it moves. Your jump clears two tiles, one echo gets you to three, and two stacked echoes get you to four.
• A colored plate holds its door open while someone, live or echo, stands on it. A striped red plate does the opposite and shuts its door while it is pressed.
• If a door closes while an echo is standing in the doorway, that echo shatters for the rest of the take. A door never closes on the live player. It waits until you are clear.
• Each room has an echo limit and a par, both shown in the top bar. The dotted cyan trail on screen is the path every echo will walk, so you can see where your past self will be.

Progression & scoring

Each room adds one new idea and then combines it with the earlier ones:

1. Wake: run and jump, no echoes needed (10 s take).
2. Hold the Door: leave an echo on a plate (8 s, par 1).
3. Step Up: a three-tile wall you can only climb from your own head (8 s, par 1).
4. Two Locks: one echo holds a plate and is also the step another echo climbs to reach the second plate (9 s, par 2).
5. Tower: stack two echoes against a four-tile wall (7 s, par 2).
6. Wait For It: your step stands on a red plate that shuts the exit door, so the echo has to stay for the climb and then walk off before you reach the door. The timing of a take matters as well as the route (10 s, par 1).
7. Everyone Has a Job: three echoes doing three different jobs, with a spike in the gap in front of the final ledge (8 s, par 3).

Take times shrink from 10 s to 7 s while the number of echoes a room needs goes up. Clearing a room scores 1000, plus 300 for every echo you had left over, plus 25 for each whole second left on the take clock, plus 500 for clearing at or under par. Running total and best score show in the HUD, and the best score is saved in localStorage.

Look & feel

The rooms are built from chunky indigo stone tiles on a dark violet gradient. You are an amber block with a visor. Echoes are the same shape in translucent cyan with a number on the chest. Doors are tall bars in magenta, gold or blue that slide open to match their plates, red plates are hatched, and the exit is a pulsing lime ring. A rewind sends cyan scanlines sweeping over the room. Plates click, doors hiss, and a shattered echo bursts into cyan shards with a burst of static. All of it is drawn on a canvas and synthesized in WebAudio, with no image or sound files.

What makes it fun

• The best moment is standing on your own head. You ended the last take next to a wall, and now that frozen copy is the step that gets you onto the ledge.
• Room 6 is about when, not where. Your echo has to step onto the red plate, wait while you climb, and then walk off before you reach the door. If it leaves a second early you fall, and if it leaves late the door stays shut. Getting it wrong costs one take, and the fix is a change in timing, not route.
• Echoes are cheap to make and you have a limited number, so every LOOP is a choice. Using one fewer than the limit is worth 300 points, which pushes you to look for the plan where one echo does two jobs, like the plate-holder in Two Locks that also serves as a step.
• Failing costs almost nothing. Spikes restart only the current take, and UNDO removes one echo without wiping the rest, so trying a new plan takes a second or two.