Daedalus

Daedalus is a puzzle game about the ascent to Olympus. "The gods built riddles. Mortals built machines." One road winds from the sea floor to the summit, through six realms: the Deep, the Forge, the High Road, Delphi, the Acropolis and Olympus. Each realm holds one puzzle from each of five trials, and at the end of each realm a god is waiting: Poseidon, Hephaestus, Hermes, Apollo, Athena and finally Zeus. That makes 30 puzzles and 6 gods in all.

The five trials

1. The Antikythera Mechanism: seat bronze gears on pegs so that every dial turns the way its arrow points.
2. The Labyrinth: guide Theseus to the golden door while the Minotaur takes two steps for every one of yours.
3. Archimedes' Burning Mirrors: turn the mirrors to bounce sunlight onto every beacon and every ship.
4. Leonardo's Aerial Screw: a flying machine that keeps going until something stops it. Gold winds lift you, blue winds sink you, and you have to land on the laurel.
5. The Arena: defeat every opponent by striking from the flank or the rear, without ever ending your step on red sand.

How it's made

Everything is in one 121 KB HTML file: the drawing, the animated title sequence with its own synthesized soundtrack, the sound effects and all 30 levels. The puzzle rules are pure logic shared by the game and the level generator that produced the puzzles. Progress is saved in your browser, it plays with a mouse, a keyboard or a finger, and it respects the reduced-motion setting.

Credits

Made by S77FFY with Fable 5.2.

How progress works

The map is one road with 36 stops: in each of the six realms you solve five puzzles (one from each trial), then meet that realm's god. Stops unlock in order. The tally shows "x of 30 solved" and "x of 6 gods met", and your progress is saved in the browser.

Every puzzle has Undo (Z or Backspace) and Reset (R). Some trials also have Wait (Space), which lets everything else move while you stand still.

I. The Antikythera Mechanism

• Gears come in three sizes. Tap a size in the tray, then tap an empty peg to seat it. A gear only fits where it has room.
• Meshed gears turn in opposite directions. The driver turns everything it touches, so count the chain: a dial an even number of gears away turns the same way as the driver; an odd number, the opposite way.
• If a dial turns the wrong way, add or remove one gear somewhere in its chain.
• Watch for jams: if gears close a loop where two neighbours would have to turn the same way, the whole train locks.

II. The Labyrinth

• Every time you move (or wait), the Minotaur moves twice, always toward you. He tries to close the horizontal distance first, and only moves vertically when he can't.
• He doesn't think ahead. Use that to get him stuck behind a wall that blocks his preferred direction, then walk around.
• Wait is a real move. Standing still while he walks into a dead end is often the key.

III. Archimedes' Burning Mirrors

• Tap a mirror to flip it between its two diagonals. Light travels in straight lines and turns 90° at each mirror.
• Rocks stop the beam. Trace backwards from each ship or beacon to find which mirror has to feed it.

IV. Leonardo's Aerial Screw

• Swipe or press a direction and the machine flies until something stops it, like sliding on ice.
• Gold winds lift you high enough to fly over low walls. Blue winds sink you back down, and then low walls stop you again.
• You can only land on the laurel while you're low. If you're still lifted you fly straight over it.
• Work backwards from the laurel: which wall would stop you exactly there, and where do you need to sink first?

V. The Arena

• Step onto an opponent to defeat them, but only from the side or the back. Walking into the cell an opponent faces gets you struck.
• After each of your steps, opponents act. Some stand guard, some turn every step, and some march forward and turn back at walls.
• Red sand marks the cells where ending your step means death. The game shows them for you, so check them before every move.

Controls

Input	Action
Arrow keys / W A S D, or swipe	Move
Click / tap	Place a gear, turn a mirror
Space	Wait (where allowed)
Z or Backspace	Undo
R	Reset the puzzle
Esc	Back to the map