Magnus

A grid puzzle game about a salvage rigger whose body became a magnet.

Magnus can pull and push anything ferrous. Force is mutual: light things slide to him or away from him, heavy things move him. Unlike poles pull, like poles push, iron can only be pulled, and crystal is invisible to a field. Every puzzle is one of those facts, applied.

Chapter 1, The Clearing, is ten rooms of increasing difficulty. See DESIGN.md for the storyline, the rules, the obstacle catalogue, and a walkthrough of each room.

Version 0.3.0.

Play

Open index.html in a browser. Nothing to install; Three.js is loaded from a CDN.

If your browser blocks scripts on file://, serve the folder instead:

python3 -m http.server 8765   # then open http://localhost:8765/

?level=7 in the URL jumps straight to a room.

The page opens on a title screen: field lines trace between two poles and flip every few seconds. Enter the bay (or Enter) starts the game; Play fullscreen (or F) starts it in fullscreen.

The board fills the window with no text on it. Info (or I) opens rules, story, and level select; Fullscreen (or F) hides the browser chrome and puts the pad on screen so the game is playable on a phone or in a kiosk.

Deploy to Render

The game is a static site (no server), so it fits Render's free static tier. render.yaml describes the service; the level solver runs as the build step so a broken room fails the deploy instead of shipping.

Or manually: Render Dashboard → New → Blueprint → pick this repo. Every push to main redeploys; pull requests get their own preview URL.

Controls

Key	Action
Arrows / WASD	Walk
Shift + direction	Pulse your field that way (or tap a tile in your row/column)
Space	Flip your pole N ⇄ S
Z	Undo
R	Restart room
F	Toggle fullscreen
I	Open / close info
H	Open info and toggle hint
[ ]	Previous / next room

Touch / fullscreen: on-screen d-pad on the left; Pulse, Flip, Undo, Restart on the right. Toggle Pulse to make the pad pulse instead of walk.

Project layout

index.html        page shell, splash screen, overlay controls, info panel
src/splash.js     title-screen animation: traced field lines between two poles
src/engine.js     the rules — pure logic, runs in the browser and in Node
src/levels.js     the ten rooms as ASCII maps
src/render3d.js   Three.js view: geometry, lighting, animation of engine events
src/main.js       input, undo history, progress (localStorage), level flow
src/style.css
tools/solve.js    breadth-first solver: proves every room solvable, computes par

The renderer never decides anything. engine.js produces a new state plus a list of events for every action; render3d.js animates those events. The game is deterministic and turn-based, which is what makes undo exact and levels verifiable.

Verify the levels

node tools/solve.js            # all rooms: solvable? par correct?
node tools/solve.js 4          # one room, with an ASCII replay of the solution

The solver exits non-zero if a room is unsolvable or its recorded par is stale.

Map legend

#  rock / hedge / log   =  crystal (field passes, bodies don't)
.  grass                _  stone plate
~  water (pit)          D  wooden gate (open while every plate is held)
A  iron-banded boulder  X  lantern / exit
N  S  heavy lodestones  @  Magnus start
i  crate                n  s  light magnet blocks