DEUS — split light from darkness, cut by cut

What is DEUS — split light from darkness, cut by cut

DEUS puts a square board in front of you with a handful of glowing orbs on it: the gold ones are light, the violet ones are darkness. One straight cut at a time, edge to edge, you carve the square into regions where the two never share a space. The catch is the price. Every cut costs Light equal to the distance it travels, and each level starts with a fixed reserve. The first cut always crosses the whole board and costs exactly 100; after that everything is cheaper, because you are only cutting inside a piece you made yourself.

Above the board sits a number called Par: the lowest total cost that solves that board, worked out exactly before you play. Finish at Par or under it and the level is PERFECT. Two extra orb types complicate the sum. A crimson Chaos orb must end up alone in a region with nothing else inside, which usually means boxing it in. A white Sacred orb counts as light for purity, but sealing it on its own pays a bonus. Genesis chains levels without end, the reserve shrinking against Par as you climb; the Daily Challenge is eight fixed levels on the board the whole world gets that day.

How to play

1. Pick Genesis for an endless run, or the Daily Challenge for eight levels on the board every player in the world gets that day.
2. Aim near the gap between two orbs and the cut snaps to that line; click and the region splits into two.
3. Keep cutting until every region is pure: none may hold gold and violet at once, and a Chaos orb must sit alone.
4. Watch the Light counter. The moment the cheapest way to finish costs more than the Light you have left, the run is over.

Strategies that work

• A cut's price is the span it crosses, not where you place it: a vertical cut costs the region's full height whichever column you pick. Shaving a sliver off a tall region costs the same 100 as splitting it down the middle, so take the position that helps most.
• Always taking the cheapest cut is a losing habit: played that way you spend about 1.57 times Par and run dry in a third of levels. Judge by the piece you leave behind, and prefer the cut that purifies one side while leaving the mixed side narrow.
• An isolated Sacred orb pays 250 points and every unspent unit of Light is worth 12, so the extra cut only pays if it costs under about 21, a span of a fifth of the board. Seal a Sacred orb already sitting in a small region.
• The swiftness bonus starts at 220 and drops 9 a second, reaching zero at about 24 seconds. All of it is worth only 18 units of Light, and one careless cut costs more than that. Look before you cut; past twenty-five seconds, thinking longer is free.
• Separate regions are independent: finishing one before touching another never changes the total price. It does change the combo, which climbs with each consecutive cut that purifies a region and resets when a cut purifies none. At five it pays 200 per purified region, so chain the finishing cuts together.

A little history

DEUS was written for this site and has no older version. Its mechanic belongs to the partition family — puzzles about dividing a board rather than filling it — and to guillotine partitions in particular, where every cut runs edge to edge across a single piece. That restriction comes from industrial cutting and circuit floorplanning, and it makes an exact solver possible: the cheapest way to divide a rectangle follows from the cheapest way to divide its parts. That is where Par comes from. What DEUS adds is the price tag, which turns a yes-or-no question into a question of order.

Frequently asked questions