About the game
Carry the final shard of daylight and restore color to a world of shadow.
Afterlight is a compact maze puzzle about planning a safe path through darkness. Each color shard permanently relights part of the world, but moving shadows learn your route and close off familiar corridors.
The permanence is what makes it a puzzle rather than a maze. Lit cells stay lit for the rest of the run, so the board is monotonically improving and an early detour to light a junction pays back every time you cross it again. Players who rush the nearest shards tend to finish the first half quickly and then find the second half unnavigable.
Shadows adapt to where you have been rather than where you are. Repeating a successful route is the single most reliable way to lose, which turns the usual instinct — find a safe path and reuse it — into a trap. The intended rhythm is to open a new corridor before the old one closes.
Three shadow contacts end the run, and the three-hit buffer is calibrated so that one mistake is survivable and a pattern of them is not.
How to play
Move through the grid with WASD, the arrow keys, or the swipe pad. Collect twelve color shards and avoid the roaming shadows.
Cells you light stay lit for the rest of the run, and lit cells are safe. Three shadow contacts extinguish the daylight and end the run.
Shadows learn the routes you have already used, so reusing a corridor that worked is the most reliable way to be caught. Spend an early detour lighting a central junction rather than sweeping the nearest shards first — the second half of the board is where runs are actually lost, and a lit junction is what makes it crossable.
Controls
WASD / Arrow keys · swipe pad
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