Solve Room-Warping Puzzles and Go Out to Play in ‘Phase’

Jose Pacio's Phase offers a very different meditation on jumping in a video game. Instead of your avatar taking a leap, the entire world leaps around you.

Like a tiny, low-res little Quantum Leaper, it's your job to find the optimal path through all the tricky geometry of your house. You walk around small, cubic rooms, finding tiny icons that add another layer—another floor—to your "jump" ability. The core challenge then, becomes finding the optimal spot to stand in to access the next doodad, to get to the next layer, and find your way out.

It's a pleasant maze, arranged vertically, with cheery graphics and appropriately satisfying "whoosh" to each hop. There's even a tiny story here, since your little avatar is a kid who just wants to get the hell out of the house—his maze—and go play. Every kid's burden, really—with just a touch more existential, impossibly-constructed crisis to it.

Phase was made during Ludlum Dare 37, with the all-too appropriate theme of "Room." You can play it for free in browser on the game's itch.io page.