0Player

0Player (stylized in all caps) is a free rule-discovery puzzle about an opaque system of tiles, lines and hearts in an abstract environment. The entire game is a single large, static image file, best played in any kind of image editing software. Its original presentation and commitment to instructionless puzzle principles netted it the Most Innovative prize in the 3rd Annual Thinky Awards.

The image depicts a top-down video game world, divided into smaller grid-based spaces with arrangements of tiles that have lines on them. The lines also run throughout the image and connect different spaces to each other. The main goal of 0Player is to determine the rules that this video game would obey, if it were interactive, and then figure out how the puzzles would be solved. Your early discoveries will reveal the game's core mechanics; for example, that the lines act like wires that propagate power from the white circles. By moving tiles within enclosed levels and transmitting power through them, you can eventually power up the black heart in each area.

While the mechanics are similar to other puzzles in video game format, 0Player is designed specifically for the non-interactive format. Since the game doesn't offer explicit feedback, you have to form theories about the behavior of the lines, and each area is designed to help you discover new rules. As with other instructionless pen-and-paper puzzles (e.g. LOK, 12 Word Searches, FMTC...), it's the level design that provides implicit confirmation. If you can form a consistent set of rules allowing you to solve every puzzle you've come across, and if these rules seem to cast a light on the next puzzles, then there’s a very high chance you got things right.

Unlike most traditional paper puzzles though, the image has fully rendered color graphics, and some game actions cannot be replicated on paper easily. This means the game is best played within an image editor, where you can quickly draw new elements or cut-and-paste existing elements to visualize changes. Still, since most levels only require minimal changes to be cleared, you could choose to solve them without charting intermediary steps.

Note: The itch.io page displays a warning when trying to download the game archive, saying "This Page Has Been Quarantined". This warning is a false alarm which you may safely choose to ignore, or alternatively download the game from the developer's website.

This description was written by Gwen C. Katz and Oriane Tury.