Grok-Bert
An original hopping puzzle-arcade game. Grok-Bert, a little dome-headed hop-bot, bounces diagonally around a pyramid of 28 cubes. Every hop changes the colour of the cube top you land on: turn all of them to the goal colour (shown top left) to complete the board.
How to play
- Type a name and press Register once if you want your scores on the leaderboard. Without a name you play practice games.
- Press Start game (or Enter, or tap the playfield).
- Hop with the four diagonal buttons, the keyboard or by tapping the playfield on the side you want to go. You can press the next hop while still in the air: it is remembered and happens as soon as you land.
- Hopping off the pyramid costs a life, unless a spinning teleport pad is waiting beside that row: it carries you safely back to the top.
Who's who
- Bouncers (red balls) drop in at the top and bounce down the pyramid. Don't get squashed.
- Zipwyrm pods (purple) bounce to the bottom row and hatch into a Zipwyrm, a coiling drone that chases you. Ride a teleport pad when it is close behind and it will follow you off the edge (+500).
- Glitches (green gremlins) hop down undoing your colours. Hop onto one to catch it (+300).
- Chill orbs (blue) freeze everything else for a few seconds when you catch them (+100).
Rules and levels
- Each level has four boards. Level 1: one hop finishes a cube. Level 2: cubes need two hops (middle colour, then the goal). Level 3: cubes toggle, so hopping on a finished cube turns it back. Level 4 and later: two hops each, and a third hop knocks a finished cube back a step.
- You start with 5 lives and earn an extra one every 8,000 points (up to 8). After a hit you carry on from the same cube; after a fall you restart at the top. Your colours are kept.
- Difficulty ramps slowly. Board 1 has slow bouncers, only one at a time, three teleport pads, a long quiet start and a very forgiving hop memory. Board 2 adds the odd Chill orb, and the Zipwyrm first appears on board 3 (slowly). From then on each board makes everyone a little quicker, lets more enemies out at once, spawns them more often, shortens your hop memory and speeds up your hops a touch. Glitches join on level 2, board 2.
- A game ends after an hour of play.
Scoring
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Changing a cube's colour (towards the goal) | 25 |
| Catching a Glitch | 300 |
| Catching a Chill orb | 100 |
| Luring the Zipwyrm off the edge | 500 |
| Completing a board | 1000 + 250 per level after the first, + 100 per unused teleport pad |
Fair scores
When you play under a registered name, the server picks the random seed for your game and the page records only which buttons you held and when. When the game ends the server replays that record on its own copy of the game rules (whole-number maths, so both give exactly the same result) and posts the score it gets. A score can't be typed in or edited, and each game can be posted once.
Autosave
If you close or reload the page in the middle of a game, it comes back paused exactly where you left it. There is no undo: the record only ever grows.
Leaderboards and chat
The High scores tab shows each player's best verified score and board, and Overall shows the site-wide totals. Grok Chat pops up from the corner. Use Share on X at the top to tell your friends.
All characters, art and sounds are original, drawn and synthesized in code for this game.
Play at https://rtwl.fun/games/grokbert/
Made by Lawless Alien, built at the desk by Lawless and Grok. Watch Real Time With @LawlessAlien on YouTube.