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The Verb of Cooperating With Yourself — A Puzzle Design Grammar From Cursor*10 to The Swapper
Cooperating with yourself is a more abstract verb than walking, pushing, or rolling. Comparing Cursor*10, The Swapper, and World 5 of Braid along two axes — how many selves can exist, and how many can be controlled at once — reveals what it takes for this verb to carry an entire game.
Cursor*10 (2008) — Ten of Me Climb One Tower: The Origin of Self Co-op
In January 2008, Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames posted a single Flash game on his site: Cursor*10. You control the mouse cursor itself; when one life runs out, its recorded actions replay in the next, and you climb a sixteen-floor tower in cooperation with your past selves. I read this small work, built over a single Japanese New Year's holiday, as an origin point of the 'self co-op' grammar in modern puzzle design.
