CONFIGURE 🎨
left-dragpaint on the drawing — right-drag rubs out
⬛ ◀ ⬒the three drawings: Front is how wide the ship is and every colour on it, Side how deep it is at each height, Above its footprint. The ship is wherever all three agree, and the greyed squares are the ones the other two rule out
🔁Mirror paints both sides at once — good for ships
➖ ➕Thinner / Thicker take a slice off the depth or add one
🧊the ship beside the drawing changes as you paint — drag it to turn it, or use the buttons under it
🚀Start from a ship to begin with one that is known to fly, and change it from there. ↩️ Reset puts the starter rocket back
🧑🚀Pick a job: each one changes how you fly, mine and jump, and some open a place in the town — the spy's academy, the pilot's airfield
👥The people: make yourself, your friends, your family and the odd bully. They are in the street when you land, with their names over their heads, and they remember what you tell them
🚀Explore, along the bottom, when you are ready. You can come back and change anything whenever you like
WALKING ABOUT
W A S Dwalk (arrow keys work too)
mouselook around
SPACEjump
Z (hold)duck down — let go to stand back up. For low gaps like the mine adit
Ctalk to whoever is next to you — type whatever you like and they answer, or tap one of the buttons. Works indoors too — the children in the classroom, the fire crew, everyone. Keep going — they remember what you were talking about, so why? and really? carry on from their last answer. Ask where something is and they will tell you. Ask a bully to stop and they will
Fwork a shift, when you are at a workplace
Gget into a car, the train or the aeroplane
🚗there is traffic on Main Street, and none of it is looking out for you. Getting run over costs two ❤️ and throws you clear of the road. Keep to the pavement, or time it — you can just about jump a car
🚇tunnel trains wait at the coast — drive one under the sea to another country (press M to see where)
Ego in through a door
B / Xput a block down / take one back
Q then Jtake out the ⛏️ pickaxe and swing it at the ground to dig. Hilltops and the dry countries give 🪨 rock; the low green ground gives 🟫 mud
Kwhat your blocks are made of — 🔩 space junk, 🪨 rock, 🟫 mud or 💎 gem (or tap one in the bar along the bottom)
⛏️ Jdown the mine you can dig anywhere: the ore glinting out of the walls comes away in two swings (🔩 and sometimes a 💎), and wall, roof or floor gives 🪨 rock. Pickaxe only — swap to it with Q
⛏️ Fdown the mine, swinging at the glowing seam drives the tunnel forward — the face and its light move further in every time, and how deep you have got is saved. 💎 Gems show in the face before you swing; take them and build with them
Hput up a building
1 – 9, 0choose which building
Tfly off into space in the ship you built
🚀 Ethere is a real rocket on the pad at the space centre. Walk up to it and press E to climb in: it counts down, lights, and takes you the whole way up — and once you are out there you are flying the rocket itself, with exactly the same controls as your own ship. So there are two ways off a planet now: T for the ship you made, the rocket for the ride
THE GIANT PYTHON 🐍
Qswap weapon — 👊 bare hands, 🗡️ sword, 🔫 blaster
J or clickattack (hold it down to keep swinging)
🎯a hit on the head counts double. It bites back, so watch your ❤️ — and it never chases you far from its own patch of ground
🐙the robot octopus lives in the generator hall, through the shutter at the back of the laboratory. It is wired into four ⚡ coils that mend it as fast as you can hit it — smash the coils first, then finish the octopus. Leave the room and come back and it is all set up again
THE SPY 🕵️
🏫pick Spy on the first screen and the Spy Academy opens — out past the airfield, south of the town. Press F at the gate to work a shift like any other trade, or E at the door for the briefing room, the decoding machine and the quartermaster
⚔️ Qthe samurai sword joins the weapon cycle — longer reach than the sword, and it goes through anything
🕶️ Ithe glasses: a strip along the top of your view showing what is behind you, without turning round. It stays up while you read, eat or carry something
✏️ Uthe pencil and paper: write anything you like and it is kept with your game. Opens anywhere — in space, in the town, down the mine. Esc puts it away
👀there are three people in the town with something to hide: Mr Crow behind the shops, Madame Sixpence in the corner park and The Gaffer down by the line. They will not talk to you — they are not meant to
✏️Get anywhere behind one and stay there. Anywhere in the whole half-circle behind them counts, out to about a dozen paces, and the bar keeps what it has filled — wander off and come back and you carry on from where you left off. Each full bar is a line overheard, and the pencil writes it into your notebook by itself — three lines each, nine in all, and together they tell you the whole thing
🚶 Zget in front of one and the bar turns into a warning: they have to hold you in their eyeline for a moment before they are sure, so duck back round behind them and you are fine. Let them finish and they come after you. They are slower than you are, so run. Hold Z to duck and they will not see you until you are half as close
⚔️ Jif one catches you it takes a swing at you, and the bar becomes a countdown: turn round and swing back with J and they have had enough of you — no hearts lost, nothing taken, and it is the one time hitting somebody is not a crime, because they started it. Getting out of reach works too. Do neither and it costs you half a heart 💔 and they tear the page back out of your notebook
🪑 Fthere is a Chief at the head of the table in the briefing room, and a row of seats in front of him. Sit down and he gives you a job: five of them, one at a time, each one teaching the next bit of the trade. The one you are on shows in the corner all the time you are out there
✅done it? Go back and sit down again. He pays you, takes any finished files off you (8 🔩 each, and he tells you what they mean) and sets the next job. Get spotted on the job that says not to be, though, and that file is no good to him — you go and get it again
⚔️ 🤫there is a rougher way to get something out of them: knock one flat and whatever they were carrying — a key, three tickets, a ringed timetable — goes straight into your pockets, and the message tells you what it is. Press U and it is listed at the top of your notebook; the Chief pays 12 🔩 each and tells you what it means. But it is still knocking somebody flat: the constables come for you, and only half the time does nobody see it
🤫that is the perk of the trade — half the time nobody sees what you did, so the constables are never called at all
THE DRAWER UNDER THE CASE 🎒
🗄️ Zthe case on the wall of the briefing room has a drawer underneath it with no handle on it. You will never see it stood up: hold Z to duck down in front of the case and it is there. Press F and the gadget belt is yours for good, the same as the kit
🎒 YY gets the belt out, and then 1 to 6 are the six gadgets. Y again puts it away and the numbers go back to picking a building for H, which is what they do the rest of the time. The belt shows along the bottom of the corner chips, and each gadget dims while it is counting itself back
1 🪝the grappling hook. Look at a cliff, a wall or a rooftop up to about thirty paces off and press 1: the rope catches and pulls you the whole way there. Anywhere it can take you is somewhere you can stand
2 🎯the dart pen. One sleepy dart, and whoever it hits goes down without a sound — no shout, no constables, nothing. They get up again a minute later none the worse. Miss and you only wait a moment; hit and it is a long wait for the next dart, so line it up
3 💨the smoke bomb. Everybody within about seventeen paces loses you completely, and if one of them has you cornered mid-swing this is the way out of it
4 🎧the listening bug. Get close enough to reach their coat and press 4, and from then on you can hear that one from anywhere — the other side of the town, the top of a hill, it does not matter. It fills half as fast as standing behind them yourself. There is only one bug, so putting it on somebody takes it off whoever had it
5 👟the soft soles. Worn rather than thrown: press 5 and they stay on until you take them off, and nobody notices you until you are half as close. They stack with ducking, so crouched in soft soles you can get nearer than any other way in the game
6 🪂the parachute. Only any use on the way down — press 6 in the air and you float instead of falling, steering with WASD all the way. Hook up, parachute down, and there is nothing on the planet you cannot get to
📱on a touch screen there are no numbers to press: tap a gadget on the belt to pick it and the 🎒 button uses that one. The belt does not have to be out for that
WISHING ON A STAR ⭐
⭐wait for it to get dark and watch the sky. Every so often a shooting star goes over — look at it and click (or tap it) to catch one. You do not have to be quick or accurate; anything near it counts
✨catch one and a box opens and asks you what you wish for. Type anything you like and press Enter. Your wish is kept with your game, so it is still there tomorrow even if you close the tab
😴 Fit comes true the next day. Wait for midnight, or find a bed and press F to sleep straight through to it. In the morning the star does what it can and tells you what it did
🤞it really does it. Wish for a friend and somebody new is stood in the street with their name over their head; wish to be fast and you are; wish for sunshine and the sun goes straight up. Money, family, food, being clever, night-time — all real
🏰and wish for a castle and there is one in the morning — curtain wall, four towers, a keep with a flag, and a gate you can walk in through. It is the only building that is not in the build bar and cannot be bought at any price, so wishing is the one way anybody ever gets one. A house works the same way
🌠and when it cannot do what you asked, it says so honestly rather than pretending. There are no animals in this world yet, so a puppy is a puppy it cannot find — it leaves you something for asking instead. A star here never tells you a fib
INSIDE THE CASTLE 🏰
🏰 Ewish for a castle and there is a whole adventure inside it: four rooms, each one harder than the last. Walk in through the gate and press E
⚔️ QTake a sword. Press Q before you go down — bare hands work, but the thing at the bottom takes sixteen punches and only six sword blows
1 🕯️the Great Hall — long table, big fire, and the old keeper stood by it. Nothing in here can hurt you. Talk to him with C: he will tell you exactly what is coming. The stair down is at the far end
2 🗡️the Dark Passage — three beds of spikes come up out of the floor and go down again. Watch one, wait for it to drop, walk over it. Halfway along the roof comes down too low to walk under: hold Z and duck through
3 💀the Crypt — three skeletons get up out of the tombs and come for you, and the door at the end is barred until all three are down. They are slower than you are, so keep moving and swing with J
4 👑the Throne Room, and the Black Knight. His shield never comes down and your sword just rings off it — except in the moment right after he swings at you. That is the whole fight: take the hit, then hit him back while his guard is down
📦 Fbeat him and the chest behind the throne is yours — a big pile of 🔩 and every heart back. He will not let you near it while he is standing
📦 👑and the crown is in that chest. Open it and you are the King — see the next section. (There is a second crown on the roof if you would rather go up the outside with the grappling hook, but you do not need it)
💀 ☠️You can be knocked out down there and you wake up outside. But the castle remembers how far you got: go back in and the stair takes you straight down to the room you reached, so you never have to do the spikes twice. You also start every room with all five hearts
THE CROWN 👑
📦the easy way to the crown is the chest at the bottom of the castle — beat the Black Knight and it is yours
🪝 1the other way: there is a pile of space junk and a crown on the roof of the keep, and the grappling hook gets you up. Stand back, look at the top of the castle and press 1 with the belt out — the rope catches the roof and takes you there
👑walk onto the crown and you are the King. A new chip shows how the town feels about that
🏠the moment you are crowned, every house in the town is done up — gold rail round the walls, a red carpet, banners, and your own portrait on the wall. Walk into any of them and look
👑 Eand a palace goes up for you, about twenty paces off. Columns across the front, a gold dome, steps up to the doors. Press E and you are home: a throne to sit on, a four-poster bed to sleep in, a table laid for one, and a butler and housekeeper to talk to. Like the castle, no amount of 🔩 buys one
💬 CNow they do as they are told. Walk up to anybody, press C and give an order in your own words: fetch me some scrap (they go off and bring you 3 🔩), follow me, stop, go home, have a dance. They really go and do it — you can watch them walk off
😠But every order costs them patience, and the chip shows it going down. Leave them be for a minute and it comes back up. Keep piling the orders on and they start refusing — and nagging somebody who has already refused you makes it worse
🚨 ✈️run it all the way down and the town sends for the air force. Three jets come in over the rooftops and make passes at you, and each one that catches you costs half a heart 💔
🏃Keep moving. Each pass is aimed at where you were standing when it started, so walking away from that spot is what makes one go wide. Indoors they cannot touch you at all — any door will do, and the castle is right there. The raid runs for about a minute and then they go home
🕊️afterwards the town is calmer but it has not forgotten. You are still King. Go easy on the orders for a bit
THE FALLING STAR ☄️
☄️be a spy, take the crown, and two days later something comes down out of the sky. It only ever happens once
💥it lands in the open a good walk off. Everybody in the street screams and bolts indoors, you are thrown off your feet, and the whole screen fills with smoke for a few seconds. When it clears there is a crater — and something is getting out of it
🐍 💚the Iron Worm: short, armoured, two rusty red eyes, and three green hearts down its back. Your sword rings off the plate — the hearts are the only thing that counts, and one clean hit takes one out. Get round behind it
💨the first three blows aimed at you miss on their own. The chip counts them down 💨💨💨 — that is your moment to get your bearings
🏃and after those, you can never be knocked out down here. When a hit would take your last heart you turn and run, all by yourself — and halfway through it you trip on a rock and go flying, pick yourself up and keep going. You end up well clear, with hearts back, and the rock is still lying there afterwards
✈️but only twice. The third time you have to run, you keep running — all the way to the plane, and you climb in and fly out. That is you done: you got away, and they do as they like to the village
⏳but running away costs you the clock, and the clock is the only way to lose. You cannot die down here — you can only run out of time
💚Bouncers — green balls like its hearts. They hop straight at you and go off when they get close. Hit them from a distance if you can
👻Lurkers — you cannot see them. Look for a shimmer and two faint red eyes, and swing anyway: the first hit that lands makes one show itself, and once it is visible it is nearly finished
🦑Tentaclers — the same thing with six whipping arms, always visible, and much tougher
🫳Throwers — they hang back out of your reach and lob bouncers at you out of their hands. Chase them down or you will never get any peace
🔥you have about two and a half minutes. Kill it and you save the town (and get 200 🔩). Run out of time and they burn down half the village — the buildings stay standing, but they are black and they are alight
THE IRON SPIRE 🗼
🗼once the falling star is over — however it went — something grows out of the crater. A tall tower with a green light on every floor, and there is something waiting on each one. Press E at the door
1 🛡️The Gatekeeper — shield up. Let it swing at you, then hit it
2 🪓The Hollow — hit it hard, and when it is half done it comes apart into two of itself. Finish both halves
3 👻The Watcher — you can only see it in the moment it comes for you. Swing then, and not before
4 🥚The Brood — it sends out little ones, and mends itself while any of them are alive. Clear them, then it
5 💚The Warden — armoured all over, with three green weak points. Find them
6 👑The Iron Crown — weak points and a shield. Wait for the swing, then go for the green. This is the last of them
🏆the stair up is barred until the floor is clear, every floor pays more than the last, and you start each one with all five hearts. The tower remembers how high you got. There is a golden orb on the roof and 250 🔩 for the first one to reach it
THE LAW 🚔
Jyou can swing at people. Nobody is hurt for long — they go down and get up again a minute later — but somebody always sees it
🚨two constables come out of the station at a run and they are quicker than you are on foot. Get well clear, or get in something with wheels
🔒if one catches you it is the cell at the police station, gate shut, 20–60 seconds depending on what you did. Sit on the bench until they let you out
🧰 Zduck down in the cell and there is something under the bench: a bad guy kit, left by whoever was in there before you. F takes it. It goes on the belt (Y) after the spy's things — 8 🎭 mask, 9 🧨 banger, 0 🔑 skeleton key — and you do not need the academy's drawer to have a belt
8 🎭the mask: for a minute nobody knows who you are, so nothing you do calls the constables, and if they are already after you they lose the face they were after
9 🧨the banger: everybody within eleven paces goes down for a bit. It is loud — without the mask on, every one of them is a crime somebody saw
0 🔑the skeleton key: opens the cell gate from the inside, no rattling, and Darn's padlocked front door from the step
⛏️ Jor break out: swing at the gate and it bends, rattles and comes off its hinges. The pickaxe is the tool for it, the blaster works, bare hands take all day. You walk out already wanted, with the constables on the step and a longer stretch if they take you back
DRIVING & FLYING
Wfaster — the plane climbs as it speeds up
Sslower — the plane comes down again
A / Dturn
G or Eget out (land first)
INDOORS
Fsit, eat, sleep, dig the seam, do the job
🍽️ Fat a plate of food you pick up a fork. F lifts a forkful to your mouth on its own — or swipe it up yourself: hold the mouse button and pull up (drag a finger up on a touch screen) and the fork follows your hand all the way. Let go short of your mouth and it sinks back down with nothing eaten. Chew, and the fork comes back loaded. The plate goes down with every bite, and an empty plate leaves you full of beans
📚 Fat a school desk the teacher sets you a lesson — a sum to work out or a story to write, turn and turn about. Type it in and hand it in; there is a button to swap to the other kind if you would rather. Sums get harder as you go, and one you cannot get is worked through with you. Three lessons and you graduate 🎓
🎬 Fat the pictures, take a seat and wait. A few seconds later the lights go down, the curtains draw back and the film starts — a real one, two and a half to three minutes long, with a certificate, a title, scenes that change and words along the bottom. There are six of them and a different one is on each time you come. Get up and walk about and it keeps playing; sit through to the end and the next one starts. F stands up, E leaves
📖 Fat a bookcase you take a book down and it opens in your hands — a title page and five pages you can actually read. ◀ ▶ turn the page, or swipe across it: hold the mouse button and pull sideways (drag a finger on a touch screen) and the page follows your hand the whole way over. Let go short of halfway and it falls back. Read one to the last page and it counts as a lesson towards 🎓 graduating. F puts it back on the shelf
🧺 Fpick a thing up — one at a time, and it goes in your hands. F again where it came from puts it back, F with nothing in reach sets it down on the floor wherever you are looking
🛒 Fin the shop, carry it to the counter and press F to put it on the scanner. It beeps, the till lights up and you pay in 🔩 — so mine some first. Food fills you up
📺 Fsit on the sofa in front of the telly and the remote is in your hand. ◀ ▶ change channel, 1 – 6 go straight to one and 0 turns it off — or tap the buttons on the remote. All six channels are live off the game itself: the news reads out what is really going on in the town, the weather is the weather outside the window, and Film Night is whatever is on at the pictures right now. It keeps playing when you get up
Estep back outside
👗 Fat the wardrobe in any house you can change your clothes — top, trousers, a coat, a hat. It is you it dresses (the person marked 👤 You), so make yourself first. You will see the outfit in a photo and behind the wheel
🪞 Fand at the bathroom mirror — over the sink, between the back windows — you can do your hair: colour, style, and whether there is a beard on your chin
🛁 🚽 Fthe bath and the toilet both work. A bath is bubbles and every ❤️ back; the toilet is a flush, and then you wash your hands
👨👧if you are a child — make yourself under 👥 THE PEOPLE with AGE set to Child, and a mum or dad in the family — then they walk with you everywhere: a step behind in the street, into the shops and the school, and with a word about looking both ways on Main Street. And once a day they have brought you a toy 🧸 — it goes on the shelf in your house, and the chip counts them
🧸 🍽️the toys come with you — a little line of them trotting along behind, into every shop and house. And there is a restaurant on Main Street now, at the far end past the cinema: sit down to dinner (F at the middle table) and every toy takes a chair round your table
🍎 Fthe Apple Store is at the east end of Main Street, across from the restaurant — the glass one with the glowing apple. Everything on the tables is switched on: F at a table to try an iPhone (take a selfie), an iPad (draw), a Mac (type your name huge) or a watch and the headphones, and F at the Genius Bar to get something fixed. J while you hold one buys it (an iPhone is 5 🔩, an Apple Watch 4, an iPad 7, a Mac 10), and then it is yours everywhere: a button for each one down the right of the screen takes it out, the same button again does the next thing on it, and J puts it away. An iPhone, iPad or Mac you own opens up when you press its button: tap the App Store, GET a game (they are free — Flappy Chicken, Drift Boss, Snake, Asteroid Smash, Alien Invaders and Rocket Jump), and it is on your home screen to tap and play. Play with the keys or tap the screen; ‹ Home stops a game, and the Camera app opens the camera
👧👦brothers and sisters (Family, age Child) play with you: they tag along in the street, dare you to races, and every so often start a game of tag — run and touch them to win. They come into the shops and the restaurant with you, and they are in your class at school, at a desk of their own
⚽footie in the school yard — round the back of the school there is a ball in the middle and a little goal at each end. Walk into the ball to kick it (run at it to kick harder); the +x end is your goal. A brother or sister in the yard goes for the ball and kicks it at yours, and the chip keeps the score
🧰 Fthe toy box at the foot of your bed: F puts the toys away — they sit in the box and stop following you — and F again gets them out. The lid lifts when you come near
🧹playing indoors makes a mess — every game leaves something on the floor (a cuddle with the bear does not). Past six your mum or dad tells you to tidy up; at eight it is a tip and you trip over things. F at the toy box tidies it all — a heart back, and a well done
Rplay with your toys — each press picks the next one in the line and it does its thing: squeeze the 🧸 bear (a heart back), kick the ⚽ ball (or just run into it), the 🚗 car does a lap round you, the 🚀 rocket launches, the 🦕 dinosaur roars and stomps, the 🪁 kite flies over your head while you walk, the 🤖 robot spins, and the 🧱 blocks build a tower and knock it over. Or tap the 🧸 chip
🏁 Gdrift. Get in any car (G) and it is put on Main Street pointing west. Drive west — mind the people and the cars, they cost you — and at the end of the road is a ramp up into the sky. Up there is a zigzag road of floating slabs with nothing on it: the car drives itself, hold W (or the mouse button, or a finger) to drift one way and let go to drift the other, and stay on. The road goes on for ever, laid ahead of you as you go, every corner a right angle, up hill and down dale with never a step in it; there are coins to collect and a chequered milestone every twelve slabs — each one is a level. Fall off and you are back at the last milestone. G on a milestone gets you down to the road. It gets a little quicker and narrower the further you go, and your best distance is kept. Each level the road learns a new trick, the ones the real game plays: quick zigzags from level 3, narrow bits from 4, long drifts from 5, coins out on the edge from 6, chicanes from 7. It is one road: go up again and you carry on from the furthest milestone you reached (hold S on the ramp to start from the beginning instead). The coins buy cars: there is a garage by the foot of the ramp — E at it — with the Zippy (quicker), the Drifter (turns tighter), the Monster (big) and the Rocket Car (fastest, and coins count double). The one you choose is parked outside it Every level makes your house better — a tumbledown shack to begin with, then a cottage, a nice house, a big house, a grand house, and a mansion — inside as well as out: the shack is a small room of bare boards, the big house gets a real upstairs — stairs up the right-hand wall to a bedroom over the back of the room — the grand house columns, and the mansion a marble hall with a chandelier and doors to every room a house has — a dining room, a kitchen, a library, a bathroom with a shower, your own bedroom, a guest bedroom, a playroom, a study and a telly room (E at a door) — and a butler 🎩 to show you round. Talk to him (C) and ask for food or a drink — "I am hungry", "dinner please", "can I have some juice" — and a moment later he brings a tray; F at it to eat, or to drink. Ask him to tidy up and he does that too — but the heart for tidying is only yours if you did it
🌙bedtime. If there is a mum or dad among the people you made, then when it gets dark they come and find you, take your hand and walk you home — to the house on Main Street with your name over the door — and put you to bed. A brother or sister (a child in the family) has a bed next to yours and gets tucked in too. Then it is morning. Once a night, and only when you are out on foot
OUT IN SPACE
mouseclick the sky and the mouse steers the ship — push it up to climb, pull it down to dive, left and right to turn. Esc gives the mouse back. The keys work as they always did
W A S Dsteer the ship
SPACEboost
Ffire at the raiders (hold it down) — or hold the mouse button while the mouse is steering
Rlevel out
❤️you can be hurt out here as well as on the ground. A raider's shot costs one heart and a 🪨 asteroid costs two — the grey lumpy rocks are the ones to go round, the glowing wrecks are the ones to fly into. Run out of hearts and you are knocked out and wake up back where you set off, good as new. Hearts mend on their own if you keep out of trouble
Lland on the planet you are near
THE SCREEN
Mthe map — tap anywhere on it and you are there ✨
Pphoto mode — hides everything so you can take a picture
ENTERtake the picture (while in photo mode)
Oturn the camera round for a selfie (while in photo mode) — you need to have made yourself under 🎨 Configure → 👥 THE PEOPLE
Vhide or show all the overlays
?this card
icons abovehide each panel on its own