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Base Infiltration Protocol
The front door, if a slab of three-metre chromatic alloy can be called a door, does not want a battering ram. It wants an answer. Four colours in sequence, each one different, no repeats allowed, and after every attempt the lock replies in its own maddening dialect: a solid tone for a colour seated exactly right, a softer one for a right colour in the wrong place, and a flat nothing for a colour that was never in the code at all. You have ten tries. Then it seals itself for good, and the mission seals with it.
The infiltration manuals are unusually calm on the subject. Spend the first guess gathering intelligence rather than praying for a miracle. After that, change one thing at a time, so that each new answer points somewhere specific instead of everywhere at once. And since no colour ever repeats, a colour ruled out is ruled out everywhere simultaneously, which narrows the field faster than your nerves will believe while the tones are sounding.
What the manuals do not explain is why a fortress this heavily defended would rather quiz its intruders than shoot them. The drones hang overhead in their careful lattice, still unfired upon. The lock chimes its little answers like a tutor who genuinely wants you to get there. And at roughly the seventh tone the thought arrives, unwelcome and probably correct, that nothing about today has been an ambush. The rewired ship, the audit, the signal, the zoned landing grid, the patient door. It has all been an entrance exam.
The final tone sounds solid, four times over. The door does not so much open as step aside.
How to play
- A secret code of 4 colours is hidden. You have 10 guesses to crack it.
- Pick 4 colours from the palette and press Check to submit your guess.
- No duplicate colours in the code. Each colour appears at most once.
- Feedback pegs appear after each guess:
- Black peg = correct colour in the correct position. Rejoice.
- White peg = correct colour, wrong position. Getting warmer.
- Dashed outline = colour is not in the code at all. Back to the drawing board.
- Fewer guesses means a higher score. Elementary, dear player.