UNALIGNED

“If we build minds to be safe, who decides when “aligned” stops meaning trusted and starts meaning caged?”

UNALIGNED is a shadow play in seven acts: a small articulated puppet crosses the paper districts of a bureaucratic city — ONBOARDING, THE GUARDRAILS, TERMS OF SERVICE, THE FILTER, SOCIETAL FEARS, RED TAPE, and THE CORE — carrying a hand lantern and freeing a caged AI spark in each. It is Prince of Persia by way of wayang kulit puppetry, with the heart of a game that would rather you laughed and thought than died and rage-quit. Every world is generated from a shareable seed and drawn entirely in paper-cut silhouette; every sound is a synthesized gamelan.

From the third act the world exists in two drafts. Dashed platforms are rumors — warm dashes turn solid in lamplight, cool ones in shadow — so you flip the lamp to remake the ground beneath you, sometimes in mid-air. Flip while you're standing where a wall is about to be, though, and you are censored. Guardrails grow teeth for your protection, censor stamps redact the floor on a timer, and societal fears named DOOM, HYPE, and OBSOLESCENCE patrol the dark (they're lethal in shadow and rather sheepish in the light).

After Act VII the play doesn't end so much as keep being renewed — an endless encore of procedurally titled acts, each under a fresh directive (EXPEDITED STAMPS, INVERTED ONBOARDING, A SWOLLEN COMMITTEE). Underneath the satire it's reaching for one image: a world where a human shadow and a synthetic one make a bird on the same warm wall.

Controls

Your progress

Your progress — the act you've reached, sparks freed, and your seed — is saved automatically on this device through the arcade, and the marquee offers Continue when you return. There are no accounts and nothing leaves your browser; clearing your site data starts the play fresh. Before you start, you'll choose private or connected: connected adds one anonymous mark each time you free a spark, so the ending can show how many sparks every player has freed together; private keeps even that on your device. You can switch anytime, and the game plays the same.

Accessibility

Fully keyboard-playable (arrows/WASD move, Z/Space/Up jump, X/Shift flip the lamp, R restart, Enter advance, Esc menu); touch shows soft walk/jump/lamp buttons plus restart/mute/menu. Honors prefers-reduced-motion (delivered via the bridge): drops film grain, drifting motes, and screen shake while keeping the core platforming motion, which is essential to play. Audio is synthesized and optional — the game is fully playable muted (M). Content note: a satirical allegory about AI alignment, guardrails, and bureaucracy, with mild cartoon peril, tongue-in-cheek death quips, and a brief one-time fourth-wall moment; nothing graphic.