ZEROTH HOUR

ZERO HOUR is a time-loop puzzle game made for the Zero Hour Challenge.

At 02:00 the clocks fall back and the hour between 01:00 and 02:00 happens twice. In this game you live that extra hour over and over. Each hour is a loop, and every time the clock falls back, an echo of your last run is left behind, replaying exactly what you did. Echoes are your only way through. Stand on a coloured plate and let the loop end, and your echo will hold that plate down for you. While it does, every door of the same colour stays open and you can walk through. Echoes stay where they finish, so you can chain them, with each one opening the way for the next, until you reach the glowing 02:00 exit.

There are 20 levels. Each one is a winding maze with bends, branches and dead ends, and the mazes grow from a small corridor with a single door to a full-screen labyrinth with six doors in four colours.

There are two modes. Easy mode is pure puzzle solving, where echoes can never hurt you. Hard mode adds time paradoxes. Moving echoes carry red vision cones, and if you stand in one with a clear line of sight, your loop collapses. If you run into a moving echo head-on, both of you are erased from time. If two echoes collide with each other, both are erased. If a door closes on you or on an echo, there is a paradox too. Erasing an echo can close the doors it was holding open, so one mistake can unravel a whole chain of echoes. Plan your route, keep your echoes moving in the same direction, and stay out of the cones.

Controls: arrow keys or WASD to move, Space to end a loop early, R to restart the level. On the title screen, press 1 or E for easy mode, or 2 or H for hard mode. You can also click a mode.

Tip: if you are stuck on a level, remember that you can end a loop early with Space as soon as you are standing on a plate. Your echo will stay there for the rest of the level.

Made as a single HTML file with no external assets. 

Cover by: https://www.clapham-collinge.co.uk/news/zero-hours-contracts-its-not-all-doom-an...