GEAR GHOSTS

You are alone in a machine that needs more hands than you have.

Every loop lasts exactly seven seconds. When the clock runs out you snap back to

the start — and the run you just made stays behind, a ghost repeating your every

step forever. Leave one holding a switch. Leave two standing on a plate that needs

the weight. Leave another hauling a gear across a conveyor. Then make the run that

counts, through doors only your past selves are keeping open.

Thirty-six rooms across seven acts, and they get harder in one direction only. The

first five teach you. Then the machine stops wanting to be opened and starts

wanting to be FED — the outlet will not let you out until you have walked gears

into it, one a loop, with every past delivery replaying alongside you.

By the last sheet you will spend seventy seconds of your own past just getting the

door open.

HOW TO PLAY

WASD / arrows — move

Gears are picked up on contact — no fumbling for a key

R — rewind early. A short loop makes a short ghost

N — restart the sheet · ESC — level map · M — mute

Each sheet shows a par: the fewest loops it takes. Three stars for par. There is

also a loop budget — spend too many and the machine jams and wipes the floor. On a

few sheets that budget is exactly par, which means there is only one way through

and it is not the obvious one.

WHAT IS IN IT

· A seven-second loop that IS the mechanic, not a timer bolted on top

· Ghosts that replay you exactly, down to the gear you were carrying

· Pressure plates · plates that need two bodies at once · gear sockets · cam gates

  on a 1.75-second beat · gates that open for one beat in four · hydraulic presses

  that kill you · conveyor belts · belts that turn around on the beat · one-way

  ratchets · doors that shut when their switch is held · an outlet that has to be

  fed before it opens

· A ghost that keeps WALKING opens one door, steps off it, and opens the next — so

  you have to go down the shaft in step with your own past

· Thirty-six hand-built rooms, from "oh, I see" to "I need eleven of me"

· A soundtrack locked to the simulation: one bar per cam quarter, four bars per loop

MADE FOR NEXTINDIE JAM #3

Theme: 7 Seconds. Surprise element: GEAR.

No art assets exist in this game. Not one image file, not one sound file, not one

font. Every gear, wall, shutter and spark is drawn from canvas primitives at

runtime, and every sound is synthesized live from oscillators and filtered noise.

The whole thing is about 96 KB of hand-written JavaScript with no engine, no

framework and no dependencies.

That is a deliberate answer to the jam's rule against AI-generated sprites,

scenery and animation: there is nothing to generate, because there are no assets —

only code.

Built in a week. Bugs, rough edges and reduced scope included, as intended.