Orbital Lock

What is Orbital Lock?

Orbital Lock is a one-input timing puzzle built around a compact celestial instrument. Each phase contains three to five concentric rings. Every ring carries a rotating marker and a fixed luminous target window, but its speed and direction are different from its neighbors. Lock the outer ring, then work inward until the whole instrument is stable.

The first phase offers broad windows and readable movement. Later phases add rings, narrow every target and accelerate the markers. You have three strikes for the entire run, so an impatient tap early can be just as costly as a difficult final lock.

How to play

• Mobile: tap anywhere inside the game area. The full screen is one large control; there is no small timing button to find.
• Desktop: click anywhere in the game area or press Space or Enter.
• Follow the numbered rings from the outside toward the core. The active ring and marker glow amber.
• Tap while the marker is inside the wide luminous arc for a Lock.
• Land inside the thin central line of that arc for a Perfect lock and a larger precision bonus.
• A successful lock freezes that ring and advances to the next one. A miss leaves the same ring active and consumes one strike.
• Three misses end the run. Lock all nineteen rings across five phases to clear it.

Scoring

Every successful lock combines four scoring components:

1. A base award for a good or perfect lock.
2. An accuracy award that grows as the marker approaches the center of the target.
3. A combo award for consecutive successful locks. Any miss resets the combo.
4. A speed award for finding the next alignment without waiting through many rotations.

Completing a phase adds a phase bonus. Clearing the fifth phase also awards a time bonus based on the total logical run duration. A quick tap is therefore valuable only when it is accurate; a miss loses the combo and one of the run's limited strikes.

Reading the instrument

The wide glowing arc is the valid target window. Its thin inner segment marks the perfect zone, while the exact center is crossed by a small bearing tick. These line shapes make the window readable without depending on color alone.

Each orbit also carries two directional chevrons. Adjacent rings rotate in opposite directions, so check the chevrons and watch the active marker instead of assuming the previous ring's rhythm will continue. Locked markers turn into outlined pointers with a check mark.

Strategy tips

1. Watch the center tick. Estimating when a marker crosses one crisp line is easier than judging the whole glowing arc.
2. Take one scouting orbit. On a new phase, learn the active ring's speed before committing a strike.
3. Reset after a miss. The marker continues on the same deterministic orbit. Let it make another pass instead of tapping again immediately.
4. Protect the combo. A safe lock near the edge keeps the combo alive; forcing a perfect that becomes a miss does not.
5. Expect the reversal. Adjacent rings alternate direction and become slightly faster toward the core.

Daily Orbit

Daily mode uses one shared seed for the full five-phase plan. Target bearings, starting positions, directions and speed variations are therefore identical for every player that day. Marker positions are calculated directly from the recorded logical input time rather than animation frames, so the same trace replays to the same score on fast and slow displays.

Accessibility and motion

The whole arena is keyboard and pointer accessible, with Space and Enter mapped to the same lock action as a tap. Successful locks, perfects and misses use distinct symbols, text announcements, shapes, audio and haptic patterns instead of color alone. Reduced-motion mode removes decorative flicker, pulsing and marker trails while preserving the core orbital movement needed to play.

FAQ

Does pausing change the alignment?

No. The game uses a pause-adjusted logical clock. Pausing freezes every marker and the scoring timer; resuming continues from that same instant.

Does the layout work in landscape?

Yes. The instrument scales to the shorter screen dimension and keeps the HUD, rings, feedback and control hint inside the current viewport in phone portrait, phone landscape and desktop layouts.

Is a target boundary valid?

Yes. Both the outer window boundary and the inner perfect boundary are inclusive. Targets that cross zero degrees use the same shortest-angle calculation as every other target.

Is Orbital Lock deterministic?

Yes. The complete plan is generated from the session seed at initialization. Movement is an exact angle calculation from logical time, and every accepted input is submitted with its timestamp and final-state hash for replay validation.