Flux Paradox — One move, two selves, two eras

What is Flux Paradox — One move, two selves, two eras

Flux Paradox gives you one set of arrow keys and two tokens that both obey them. The amber token is your 1955 self, the cyan one your 1985 self, and both stand on the same grid seen thirty years apart. Press right and both step right in the same instant. What separates them is the walls: amber walls exist only in 1955, cyan walls only in 1985, so one self can be stopped dead while the other keeps going. A level ends when both selves reach their own dashed portal on the same move, and the two of them may never share a square.

That last rule carries the difficulty. Because one input drives both tokens, the gap between them never changes while both are free to walk; it changes only when a wall stalls one of them. Desynchronising is your only tool, and it is also the only way to cause a paradox, since a collision needs one self standing still while the other walks onto it. Deeper levels add pressure plates and striped doors that reach across the eras, a clock of seventy to a hundred and fifty seconds, and three lives per run. Journey runs until the lives are gone; the Daily Challenge is five fixed levels.

How to play

1. Use the arrow keys, WASD, the on-screen pad or a swipe; every input is sent to both selves at once, so you never move one token on its own.
2. Amber walls block only the 1955 token and cyan walls only the 1985 one, so steer a self into its own colour to make the pair drift apart.
3. Standing on a pressure plate in one era holds the striped door open in the other, so one self waits on the plate while the other slips through.
4. Finish with both selves on their own portal on the same move; neighbouring squares are fine, sharing one is a paradox and costs you a life.

Strategies that work

• While both selves can move, the vector between them is frozen: five squares apart before the move, five squares apart after it. Only a wall that stops one of them changes that. Before planning a route, find the amber and cyan walls sitting on it and treat them as brakes, not as obstacles to avoid.
• A paradox cannot happen while both tokens are moving, because they keep the same offset. It needs one self already held by a wall, an edge or a closed door while you push the other onto that square. When the tokens pulse red they are one square apart, which is exactly when a stall turns fatal.
• If both selves are blocked, the move is refused: the tokens flash but the counter stays put. That is a free way to test a wall without spending a move, and a corner where both are stuck is not by itself a dead end. The clock keeps running, though.
• Flux capacitors are worth 250 points each, but the generator places them off the route its own solver found, so taking one almost always pushes you past par. Matching par pays 600 points plus a combo multiplier that reaches double after eight perfect levels in a row. While a combo is alive, walk past them.
• Undo costs 40 points per press when the level is scored and returns no time; the reset button leaves the clock running too. The time bonus is 14 points per whole second left, and a level with a par of 11 opens with 71 seconds. Plan the whole route before the first key press.

A little history

Flux Paradox was written for Puzzle-Me and has no earlier edition to trace. Its mechanic belongs to the synchronised-control family: one command, several agents, all obeying it at the same time. Grid puzzles have used that idea for a long time, and what makes it hard is not execution but the shape of the problem: the state you are really solving is the pair of positions, so the search space is the product of the two boards rather than their sum, and thinking about one token at a time is never enough. The two-era layer is this game's own addition.

Frequently asked questions