A four-part series for the Atari® 2600
CHASE THE BEAM.
Four games. One 1977 console. Growing minds. A puzzle-platformer series where the hardware and the characters wake up together — from a bare 4K cartridge where Stella is alone, to a friend who fits where she can't, to someone new waiting quietly at the end… and beyond.
4,096 bytes Real 2600 hardware & emulators Every level machine-verified
Wait for it — the world turns over.
4K cartridge · no bankswitching · 1977 launch tech
Stella wakes alone in a small, constrained world. Twenty levels — ten to learn the world, ten after it turns upside down — plus an endless mode where the clock tightens with every room you survive.
8K cartridge · F8 bankswitching · the Pitfall! era
The world has expanded, and someone new has arrived. Three shapes, deeper cooperation — and levels that exist in two places at once, the way only a bankswitched cartridge can.
Coming soon
16K cartridge · F6 bankswitching · the platform's peak
The world grows richer — and begins to fail. Zones of flickering corruption spread, and in them lives a fourth shape, only ever half there. Bring tissues.
Coming soon
ARM coprocessor cartridge · the modern homebrew frontier
The structures at the edge of the world become legible. The shapes learn what they are — and what they were made to honor. The series ends where games begin.
Coming soon
Every game targets the same 1977 machine. Only the cartridge grows: 4K, then 8K, then 16K, then a modern ARM coprocessor. The Atari 2600 was built so the intelligence lives in the cart — and in this series, so do the characters' minds.
"Stella" was the 2600's internal codename. The TIA chip drew each scanline in real time, racing the electron beam across the tube. Each game's constraints aren't limitations to hide — they're the world the characters live in, and feel.
Hand-written 6502 assembly, cycle-counted against the beam. Every level and goal variant is proven completable by a build-time solver before the ROM will even assemble. An open homage to Mike Bithell's Thomas Was Alone, told entirely with original characters.