FRINGER for Playdate

Untangle the knots before the sweep pushes them to the bottom!

Fringer is a thread-twisting game from the Microsoft Puzzle Collection (1997), remade for the Playdate, based on a PICO-8 demake. A braid of strands hangs down the screen, crossing over and under itself. Move the frame left and right with the d-pad and press A to twist or untwist the pair inside it. The frame climbs to the highest knot it can reach, and a strand with no knots left falls away. Clear every strand to finish the level.

Every so often a bar sweeps down the braid, adds a new row at the top and pushes every knot one row lower. If a knot is still on the bottom row when a sweep finishes, the run is over.

The frame's tab shows which direction, or crossing angle, it can undo, and every twist reverses it, so where you twist matters: a new knot below an obstruction changes which strands meet. Knots between strands of the same shade come undone in either direction.

Along the way:

- Sparkling knots award flips. Up or down on the d-pad spends one to reverse the frame's direction. You can hold up to ten.

- From world 2, candles can appear at the top and bottom of the braid. Connect them along a single strand and it burns away when the sweep ends.

- From world 3, look for paint. B reshades every strand, waiting for any sweep to pass first.

The music comes from the original game's MIDI files, played through synthesizers built for the Playdate using guesswork and my recollection of the original songs, forever ingrained in my brain.

CREDITS

- Fringer, and its music, © 1997 Microsoft, from Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection.

- Pico Fringer, the PICO-8 remake this port is based on, by darmoknjalad: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=145854

- Roobert fonts from the Playdate SDK.

- Playdate port by neuroine.

AI USAGE

AI assistance was used in the code: porting the PICO-8 cartridge, extracting the music from the original CD, and building and tuning the music instruments. The graphics, sound effects, drum sounds and launcher art are all drawn or synthesized by that code, so indirectly they are AI-assisted too, but not in the way the term "generative AI" is commonly used; there are no AI-generated images or recordings, and the music's notes are the original game's. I realize this is a sensitive topic at the moment, particularly in indie gaming communities. I work full time as a dev, and recently had a baby, and this is a passion weekend project to bring a game I used to love to a new format where I can keep playing it. It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for AI, because I never would have found the time for it, and I certainly wouldn't have hired a dev to do it for me, so in my view it didn't "steal" creative work from a human that deserved it. I want to be completely upfront about this, and leave it up to you to decide if this is acceptable for you personally.

LICENSE

This port adapts Pico Fringer's rules, level progression ensed under Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The port is released under the same license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

You are free to share and adapt it for non-commercial pur credit and release your changes under the same license.

The music is not covered by this license. The songs are M the original game, and are included without permission as a tribute to it. If the copyright holder asks, I will remove them and republish the game without music.

This is a free, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.