Syncline is a puzzle game where your piece is a whole line of cubes. You tip it end over end across the board, one move at a time, until a cube touches every goal. Lying flat, the line rolls along the ground. Stood on end, it can climb. If you played Bloxorz or Cuboid, the rolling will feel familiar. The difference is that this piece can come apart and be put back together.
Climb up, then find a way down
Stand the line on end next to a ledge and roll, and it tips up onto the higher ground. Cubes that don't make it up stay below. Those loose cubes aren't lost. Roll so one sits in line with the end of your line and it joins back on. That's also how you get down again: a loose cube waiting on lower ground is your way back down.
When the line breaks
Roll into a wall and the line breaks. The cubes that can move go with you, and the rest stay where they stopped, a duller blue, waiting to be collected. A short line fits through places a long one can't, and some goals need every cube you have, so knowing when to split and when to gather up is a big part of the game. Your line never rolls off into empty space, so you can't lose a cube to a careless move.
Turn the camera
The camera turns in quarter steps, and your controls turn with it. The angle matters for more than the view: when the line breaks, where you're looking from can change which cubes stay with you. Pan and zoom the camera to look over the whole level before you move.
Blocks that take your cubes
A Destructor destroys any cube that touches it, from any side, and your line splits where that cube was. A Duplicator turns the cube that touches it into another Duplicator, so every touch leaves one more of them on the board. Neither one wears out.
Ground that changes under you
Fragile ground carries you once and breaks as soon as you roll off it, so the order you cross it in matters.
Cover every cell of a Trigger and blocks elsewhere on the board appear or disappear. Some levels also lock the goal until you've touched every Subgoal.
Undo any move
Every move can be taken back. Hold Undo and the board rewinds one move at a time. A restart is instant and can be undone as well, so you can test an idea without starting over. If you'd rather not lean on it, a set of achievements counts the harder levels you solve without undoing once.
Features
- Over 90 Hand-Made Levels: Packs that are each built around their own mechanic, from a tutorial that teaches one thing at a time to packs that use everything at once.
- Every Level Is Solvable and Has a Par: The game's own solver checks each level before it ships and works out the fewest moves it takes.
- Leaderboards and Achievements: Every level outside the tutorial has its own Steam leaderboard, ranked by fewest moves with time as the tiebreak. Achievements for finishing packs, matching par and solving without undo.
- Level Editor: Build levels in the same editor every level in the game was made in. The solver tells you whether your level can be beaten, and in how many moves, before you share it.
- Community Packs on mod.io: Publish your packs, then browse, rate and play everyone else's without leaving the game.
- Take Your Time: No move limits, nothing random, and no clock on screen unless you turn it on. The pause menu lists every block in the level and what it does.
- Set Up Your Way: Full controller support and rebindable controls. Color themes with colorblind palettes, Block Symbols, adjustable text size, and Storybook, a textured block style.
Simple to roll, hard to line up.
