Amber Mile

The last bus of the night will only drive where the light falls. You decide where that is.

A LIGHT PUZZLE FOR iOS
The one rule

Light steers the driver

Each mile is a stretch of country road seen from above, and every tile of it is dark. The bus rolls only onto lit asphalt. Its own headlamps reach one tile straight ahead, so bends and junctions are yours to light.

  1. Place lamps from the tray onto the iron lamp bases along the verge.
  2. Turn the key and let the bus go.
  3. Watch it read the light: at a fork the driver takes the lit branch. Light both and the bus stops where it is.
sodium post on a lamp base by the right branch · the bus turns where it can see
The tray

Four lamps, four tempers

Sodium Post

Lights its own tile and the four around it. Warms up pink before it settles amber.

Floodlamp

Throws a straight line of light three tiles long. Tap it to turn the beam.

Porch Lantern

Glows on its base and the four corner tiles, softly enough that a sleeping cottage stays asleep and no deer startles.

Signal Flare

A wide blaze that burns out after the bus passes once. On roads that loop, the second pass meets the dark.

Along the route

Riders, cottages and deer

Riders wait at shelters by the road and only step aboard if their stop is lit when the bus comes by. Leave one in the dark and the bus rolls past without them.

Cottages sleep along the verge. Spill a lamp onto a window and someone wakes up, which costs you the Still Village punch on the ticket.

Deer graze in the fields. Out of the light they never notice you. Let a lamp's glow fall on one and it bolts into the lane, and the drive is over.

At the end of each mile a ticket slides out of the machine, punched for Thrifty, Full Coach and Still Village. The fares it earns go toward new rides at the all-night garage, from a milk float to a camper.

Past Harbour the fog rolls in. On the twelve Fog Miles the headlamps cannot pierce it, so every next tile of road has to be lit by a lamp of your own.