Emberfall

The caldera was asleep until the frost golems capped its vents with ice. The cinders volunteered to open them again — by catapult, head first.

Emberfall is a physics puzzle game about aim, angle and restraint. Every vent is a hand-built structure of ice, frostglass and basalt with golems perched somewhere inside it. You get a catapult, a handful of cinders and a par: the number of shots the level is designed to fall in. Clear it under par and you keep all three stars. Waste a cinder and you lose one. There is no random spawning and no energy timer — a level either yields to a better shot or it doesn't.

TEN CINDERS, EACH ONE A DIFFERENT TOOL
• Magno — a molten boulder, heavy with a short arc
• Spark — fast and far, tap to pierce straight through
• Boomrock — a short lob that detonates on contact
• Cinder — tap to split into three
• Vortex — tap and it boomerangs back the way it came
• Drill — tap to burrow under a wall instead of through it
• Ashling — tap to float, tap again to drop like a stone
• Colossus — sheer mass, flattens whatever it lands on
• Kiln — tap to drop a firebomb and recoil upward
• Bellow — tap to swell and shove blocks aside

Every ability is a single tap while the cinder is in the air, which means the shot is only half the decision. The other half is when you press.

61 VENTS ACROSS TWO CHAPTERS
Chapter I · Cinders of the Caldera — thirty-one vents sealed by frost. Learn the arcs, learn what breaks and what only cracks.
Chapter II · The Thaw Engines — the golems answered by building machines. Nothing stands still now: patrols walk, counterweights swing, mill wheels turn. Timing joins aiming.

FOUR DIFFICULTIES, AND THEY REALLY DIFFER
Kindling gives three spare cinders and softer golems. Ember is the campaign as designed. Wildfire gives one spare and tougher golems. Caldera gives none at all — par shots only, and every cinder must count. Progress and stars are tracked separately for each difficulty, so nothing you earned is overwritten when you step up.

MATERIALS THAT BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY
Ice shatters. Frostglass explodes into shards. Basalt barely notices a direct hit — you bring it down by taking away what holds it up. Half of the game is learning to aim at supports instead of targets.