Trapdoor Trouble

How to play Trapdoor Trouble

You play Blot, a small pink ink drop, and the goal of each level is always the same: reach the door with the arrow sign and step inside. The level looks harmless, a flat floor and an open path, but it has one to three traps hidden in it. They fire when you walk into a certain spot, when you jump, when you land, after a set time, or straight after another trap goes off.

When a trap gets you, Blot splats, a short message tells you what happened, and you are back at the start almost before you notice. Nothing is lost except a point on the death counter. The fun is in working out what the level is about to do, then beating it on the next attempt.

• Trapdoors: a piece of floor drops out from under you.
• Pop-up spikes: spikes shoot out of empty floor, sometimes only when you jump, and some sink back after a moment.
• Falling ceilings: a block slams down and then stays as a wall you have to climb over.
• Crumbling floor: cracked tiles fall a split second after you stand on them, so keep moving.
• Sliding platforms, darts, bridges that appear or vanish, gravity flips, and a door that runs to a new spot.

Controls on keyboard and touch screens

On a keyboard, move with the left and right arrows or A and D. Jump with Space, the up arrow, W or Z. Hold the jump key for a full jump and tap it for a short hop: a full jump rises nearly three tiles and carries you about three and a half tiles across at full speed. Press R to restart the level instantly and P or Escape to pause.

On a phone or tablet, two arrow buttons sit at the bottom left and a big round jump button at the bottom right. They are multi-touch, so you can hold right and tap jump at the same time. In portrait the buttons sit under the level; in landscape they float over its corners so the level stays as big as possible. The game pauses on its own when you switch tabs or apps.

The controls are forgiving on purpose. You can still jump for about 90 milliseconds after running off a ledge, and a jump pressed up to about 110 milliseconds before you land is remembered and fires the moment your feet touch the ground. Traps are the hard part, never the controls.

Worlds and levels

There are 30 hand-made levels split into three worlds of ten, each with its own printed look. Clearing a level opens the next one, and the world map shows every level with its star and best time.

• Paper Town (tomato red on cream paper): trapdoors, pop-up spikes, falling ceilings, crumbling bridges and a very shy door.
• Cobalt Night (deep blue city at night): platforms that slide away or carry you up, darts fired from the walls, bridges that build themselves and gravity that flips you onto the ceiling.
• Mustard Dunes (teal ground under a mustard sky): everything at once, darts raining from above, and more levels where the traps change after you die.

Traps that change after you die

Some levels remember how many times you have tried. On the second or third attempt a trap may move, fire earlier, stop retracting, or be swapped for a different trap altogether, so a route you memorised on the first try can catch you out. Restarting with R also counts as a new attempt. Every version of every level can be beaten: each one ships with a recorded solution that the game is tested against, so there is always a way through.

Deaths, stars and best times

Each level has a death counter and a timer. When you reach the door the level is stamped as cleared and you see how many times you died on that visit, your time for the winning attempt and your best time. Each level also has a star target, from one to six deaths depending on how mean it is; finish within it and the star is yours. Your fewest deaths, best time and stars are saved in this browser, along with a running total of every death, which is part of the fun to watch climb.

The daily trap

The daily trap is a remix built from the date. One of several layouts is picked and each of its trap slots gets a random trap from a safe pool, such as a trapdoor, spikes or a falling block in the same spot. Everyone who plays on the same day gets the same remix. Reach the door to mark today's challenge as complete; your best daily time is saved too.

Tips for beating the traps

Troll levels reward curiosity more than speed. These habits help.

• Watch for the telegraph. Shaking tiles, spikes peeking out and glowing dart launchers all give you a short warning before they bite.
• Poke the trap, then back off. Many traps trigger from a spot just before the danger: step in, step back, let it fire, then cross.
• Falling blocks become steps. A slab that slammed down is now solid and is often the only way up to a ledge or a moved door.
• Keep moving on cracked tiles. Crumbling floor gives you a fraction of a second per tile, which is plenty if you never stop.
• Jumps can trigger traps too. If spikes pop up when you jump, a small hop early on can set them off safely.
• Do not trust a route twice. On a level with changing traps, approach the second attempt as carefully as the first.