Play it: rvenning.github.io/brix
A modern, touch-friendly web game built on BRIX 1.00 — Michael Riedel's 1991 public-domain DOS puzzle game — with all 112 original puzzles reproduced exactly.
Push blocks sideways, let them fall, and make touching blocks of the same kind blast away before the clock runs out. Same puzzles, completely modern game.
- Levels. The 112 levels were extracted from the original
LEVELSfile, not retyped. Each encodes back to its original 178 bytes, and each loads identically in the original executable's own level loader.npm run validate-levels→112 / 112 levels match. - Rules. The original
BRIX.EXEruns in a small 8086/DOS emulator intools/brix-oracle/. Bots played every level in it while every key pass, fall step and elevator step was recorded. The modern engine replays those 112 traces — over 230,000 steps — and must reproduce the original's state after every single one, including the original's quirks (latched keys, stale elevator stack counts, duplicate stack matches). - Completion. A solver has found solutions for 69 levels (36 of the 37 without an elevator, 33 of the 75 with one). All 69 replay to a clear as timed key presses through the modern scheduler, and all 36 elevator-free solutions also clear the emulated original when keyed in. Elevator solutions depend on sub-frame timing, so only 5 of 33 reproduce in the original's jittery real-time loop; their mechanics are covered by the traces above.
How the original works — with evidence and open questions — is in docs/brix-mechanics.md.
- The original campaign: the 7-level tree of choices, time limits, retries, five continues, cumulative score, hall of fame, and a saved run you can continue later
- Practice mode with every reached problem, stars, best points and best time
- Original artwork drawn in code: every block type has its own glyph as well as its colour
- Particles, screen shake, eased cursor, smooth elevators, bonus tally — with a reduced-motion setting
- Synthesised sound effects and adaptive music, each switchable
- Keyboard (arrows/WASD, Space, R, Esc), mouse and touch (tap to pick up, drag to push)
- Responsive: desktop, tablet and phone; each level's playfield is cropped to fill the screen
- Level editor: originals open read-only; duplicate to edit, undo/redo, test play, JSON import/export
- Installable PWA that works offline
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:8129
npm test
npm run buildSee docs/development.md for the oracle, the solver and debug tools.
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| docs/brix-mechanics.md | The original rules, marked confirmed / read from code / unknown |
| docs/architecture.md | Engine, scheduler, rendering and verification layers |
| docs/level-format.md | The brix-level/1 JSON format and its mapping to the original bytes |
| docs/development.md | Commands, deep links, debug overlay, tooling |
| docs/brix-history.md | Where BRIX comes from |
| docs/legal-notes.md | Public-domain evidence and what is (not) used |
These change presentation only; see the architecture doc for why none affects a puzzle.
- Blasts freeze the game for 0.76 s instead of 1.47 s (everything freezes either way; "Classic blast timing" restores the original).
- The level tree's 10-second choice timer is off by default (a setting turns it on).
- Block colours are not randomly rotated per problem.
- Two-player alternating mode is not implemented.
- A cross-problem state leak in the original (a stale elevator stack count) is not reproduced; each problem starts clean.
BRIX 1.00 © 1991 Michael Riedel, released into the public domain. This project is not affiliated with him or with Epic MegaGames, and uses nothing from later BRIX releases. Fonts: Fredoka and Nunito (SIL Open Font License).