The sun is rising. Get to the coffin.
Play Coffinward — free, in your browser
Coffinward is a free browser-based gothic action platformer about one race: the last hour of night, run from the top of the Count's tower to his coffin in the crypt. Dawn is not a timer in the corner. The sun is a real light in the world, rising behind the mountains to the east, and anywhere a straight line from you to it reaches open sky, it burns. The top of the tower catches it first. Beams come in low and sideways through the east windows, stained glass throws red and blue shafts that sting instead of kill, and as the sun climbs the light tilts downward and reaches further into the house — down light wells into the kitchens, through a grated shaft into the dungeons, down the cistern in the catacombs — until only the deepest dark is safe. Ten parts of one castle stack on top of each other: the tower, the great hall, the library, the private chambers, the servants' stairs, the kitchens, the dungeons, the catacombs, the crypt and the vault, and every one has a fast way down that the sun sees and a slow way the sun does not. The Count runs, jumps, dashes as mist through iron bars, and turns into a bat to fly through gaps a man cannot fit. Hunters with lanterns and crossbows have got into the house ahead of him. Boxes of his native earth are checkpoints: fall, and you rise at the last one, and the dawn goes back with you — the clock you are scored on does not. The Count is Bram Stoker's, from the 1897 novel: an old man in black with a long white moustache, not anybody's film.
You start in the study at the top of the tower, an hour before sunrise. The castle clock strikes the quarters, and the little dial at the top right is the only timer on the screen — the real one is the light. Watch the east windows: when they start to glow, the sun is on its way.
Sunlight is any beam you can see. If a straight line from the Count to the sun reaches the sky, he burns, and the blood bar at the top left drains while he is in it. Shade is anything solid between you and the east — a wall, a floor, a wooden platform, a tall press of books. Out of the light, blood comes back on its own after a moment.
Stained glass lets through about a third of the sun and colours it, so a red or blue beam stings rather than kills. Clear windows do not. Iron bars let through most of it.
The sun rises in the east, so its beams come from the right and travel down and to the left, and they get steeper as dawn comes. A low morning beam is a horizontal band you can run under; the same window an hour later lights the floor. The same rule is what makes the deep castle dangerous late: light wells and shafts that are dark at first light end up full of sun.
The dash is mist. For its moment you pass through iron bars, and nothing can strike you — stakes, bolts and hunters go straight through. A dash straight down while standing on bars takes you through a grated floor. It still burns in the sun, but crossing a beam in a dash costs far less than walking through it.
The bat flies anywhere, as long as its meter lasts — about four seconds — and fits through one-tile gaps a man cannot. It refills on the ground. If it runs dry in open air he turns back into a man and falls; if it runs dry in a vent too small for a man, he crawls out as a very tired bat. Dash while a bat to turn back and dash in the same instant.
Boxes of earth are checkpoints. Touch one and it opens. If you die, you rise at the last one you touched with full blood, and the dawn is turned back to the moment you reached it — so dying never leaves you with a castle you can no longer cross. The time on the leaderboard keeps running, though.
Every part of the castle has at least two ways down. The quick ones cross the east side of the house, where the windows are, or drop through rotten floors and shafts; the slow ones take the dark stairs and passages on the west. Which is faster depends on where the sun is when you get there.
Hunters walk the chambers, the dungeons and the crypt with lanterns. The lantern is holy light and burns like weak sun at close range. Touching a hunter hurts; dashing through one knocks him down for a few seconds. Bowmen stand still and draw a thin red line down their aim before they loose.
At the bottom of the crypt is the vault. The moment you are inside, its roof starts coming down from the west end, and the hillside above is already in full daylight. Run east. At sunrise itself — the fourth strike of the clock — nowhere in the castle is safe but the coffin.
There are nine pages hidden in the castle: letters, notes and a hunter’s list, in secret rooms behind false walls, on high ledges only a bat can reach, and in one locked cell only mist can enter. They tell you what happened here, and the result card counts them.
It is free and it runs in your browser, on a computer or a phone, with no install and no account. Every picture and every sound in it is generated by the game itself as it runs — it loads no image, sound or music file — so it starts in a moment.
The night lasts six minutes of dawn clock, and a first run that reaches the coffin usually takes most of it. Once you know the castle a clean run is a couple of minutes, and the leaderboard is for how short you can make it.
You rise at the last box of earth you touched, with full blood, and the dawn is turned back to where it was when you got there. That means a death never strands you in a castle the sun has already taken. The time you are scored on keeps running, so deaths still cost you on the leaderboard. You can also start the whole night again at any moment.
The sun is a real light rising in the east. Anywhere a straight line from the Count to the sun reaches open sky is sunlit and burns; anything solid in between is shade. The beams you see on the screen are drawn from exactly the same rule, so what looks lit is what hurts. Stained glass lets through about a third of the light and iron bars most of it. As the sun climbs its beams get steeper, which is why the top of the tower is lit first and the deep castle last.
No. He is taken from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, which is in the public domain: an old man dressed in black from head to foot, with white hair and a long white moustache, who travels in boxes of his own earth and can become mist or a bat. The castle, the art, the sound and the game are all original.
Yes. On a touchscreen you get a stick for your left thumb and JUMP, DASH and BAT buttons for your right, and you can slide a thumb from one button to another. It works upright, but it is much better with the phone turned sideways, where you can see more of each floor.
There are nine of them hidden in the castle — behind false walls, on ledges only a bat can reach, and in a cell only mist can get into. Each is a short note from someone who lived or came to the castle, and together they tell you what happened there. The game remembers every page you have ever found.
Yes. Any standard controller: the stick or d-pad to move, A to jump, X to dash and Y to become a bat.
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