Backsight

Crestwatch

The climber's view across a field of pale stone blocks under a violet sky: far ahead, a small red watcher on a white pedestal at the top of a stepped rise, its orange cone of sight pointing right, green trees and two brown boulders scattered along the ridge.

You cannot walk, only look. Climb a landscape of hills until you stand above the watcher on the highest peak.

02. Rereads: The Sentinel. Geoff Crammond, 1986.

It already plays on the desktop and in the browser, but the browser build needs a running server and there is no public one to open yet.

1.0 The old rules

Kept whole

Energy is never made, only moved.

You are a robot that cannot take a step. You absorb the trees, boulders and empty robot shells you can see, you spend what you take to create them, and you travel by creating a shell on a distant square and moving your mind into it.

Every action needs a clear view of the square it touches, so the climb is a chain of vantage points won one after another, until you reach a spot that overlooks the watcher and can take its place.

2.0 The new question

What if you were not alone on the hill?

Four players. The same hills.

Up to four players start from squares nobody can see and draw on the same landscape, so every tree one player absorbs is a tree the others cannot have.

The only way to strike a rival is to force them into hyperspace, which costs no energy but costs time, and while you attack you stand exposed and do not climb. The duel goes to whoever read the landscape, not to whoever clicked first.

The same view at full width: the watcher far off on its pedestal above the rise, the blocks stepping down towards you and a dark pool of lower ground at the bottom left.
From the watcher's own plateau, a flat tiled expanse running to the horizon, the red watcher and its cone of sight close at hand, and several violet rival watchers standing on blocks in the distance, each with a cone of its own.
From the watcher's plateau: the rivals stand far off across the tiles, each with its cone of sight.
A close view of the red watcher on its white pedestal, its orange cone of sight laid across the tiles to the left, two large brown boulders in the foreground and green trees on the slope behind.
Up close on the watcher: its cone of sight on the tiles, boulders at its feet.
A wide, low view over terraced blocks with green trees, the red watcher small in the distance with an orange sphere above it and three violet rivals on the ridge beside it, their cones pointing away.
A wide view over the terraces, the watcher and three rivals on the far ridge.
Looking up from a ledge of stone blocks to the red watcher on its pedestal at the top left, its orange cone pointing across the sky, with a slope of terraced blocks and green trees falling away to the right.
Looking up at the watcher from a ledge, the terraces falling away below.

3.0 Particulars

As of 2 November 2026

Players
One to four, online
Campaign
Three hundred landscapes, each opened by a code you can dictate out loud
Also
A landscape of the week with its leaderboard, a ghost of your best game to race, cooperative tables, relays and puzzles
Getting in
A tutorial of four lessons, with keyboard and mouse, a gamepad or a touch screen, and every command reassignable from the options panel
Scores
Replayed by the server before they stand, and the same simulation on every machine, so a desktop player and a browser player share a table
Runs on
Browser, Windows, Linux
Made with
Godot
Coming out
Paid on the desktop through Steam, with a demo limited to the campaign; English at launch, with more languages to follow
State
Playable, not yet released

4.0 For the press

Take what you need

Write for a build, an interview or an image at a size we have not thought of: hello@backsight.games.