Torchbearer
A machine builds the level around you. It is not evil and it is not a person — it does whatever it is permitted to do, and it carries a visible list of what that is. Some runs, a clause of the 1787 Constitution is in force, and it deletes one move from that list. Your whole advantage is the hole.
You never get stronger, and that is the point. The design note for this game asked for amendments as power-ups — a “Voice blast” for the First, a “Suffrage Lift” double jump for the Nineteenth. An amendment is not a power a citizen wields. It is a limit on government: “Congress shall make no law” restricts the state. A blast would teach that free speech is something you do to somebody, and a double jump would reduce the enfranchisement of half the population to a movement upgrade. So you have three verbs here and never a fourth, there is no pickup and no attack button, and every clause acts on the machine’s list rather than on you.
The torch is the record, not a weapon. Carrying it makes you visible, which is a cost rather than a power. Put it down and you move unseen — the clause still binds in the dark, and what you have given up is the remedy rather than the right. That distinction is most of why records matter, and it is worth a whole mechanic.
One level has no clause in force, and the door does not open. There is no gap to walk through, because nothing forbids what is being done to you. That is the level about enfranchisement, and it renders it as the thing that was absent — which is what it was. The only thing you can do there is add your name to the record, which is what the people at Seneca Falls did in 1848, in words this game quotes exactly.
Step-based, not a platformer, and that is deliberate. The row asked for a platformer. This project’s access standard requires a route for somebody who cannot see the screen, and timing you cannot see is timing you cannot meet. Nothing in the design needed reflexes — reading a list and finding the gap does not — so the clock moves only when you act, which is what makes the text and the board the identical game rather than one being a lesser copy of the other.
The Works’ tape
Everything the machine may do right now. It is not evil and it is not a person — it does whatever it is permitted to do. Your whole advantage is a hole in this list.
- retroactive
- targeted
- hold-without-cause — forbidden here
- unfunded-build — forbidden here
- promote-a-unit
- convict-on-one-witness
- demand-an-answer
- question-the-protected — forbidden here
What forbids it
“for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
U.S. Const. art. I, § 6, cl. 1
The limit protects somebody who is not you, and you must route around a protected actor. Limits are structural, not personal favours.
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7
Every wall costs, and the ledger is on screen because the clause says a regular statement and account shall be published. Reading the balance tells you which wall it can still afford.
“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2
Caged, you may demand the cell open and state its cause. The clause carries its own exception in its own words, and one level puts that exception in force — the game quotes the 'unless' and stops. It does not rule on whether any real suspension was justified.
Your three verbs
Three, and you never get a fourth. There is no pickup in this game and no attack button — nothing here makes you stronger.
Every clause is quoted exactly and cited. The Works, the tiles, the torch and every number are invented and labelled. This is not legal advice and not a constitutional commentary; for the text itself, whole and with its provenance, read it at /read.
Every clause is quoted exactly from the National Archives transcription of the 1787 parchment and pulled out of it by the build rather than typed. No amendment text appears anywhere in this game, because none is verified in this project. Nothing here is scored, saved or sent anywhere. For the Constitution itself, whole and with its provenance, read it at the reader.