ورايا - waraya

Waraya is a puzzle game about your shadow: a shadow that repeats everything you did, a fixed few seconds later.

You do not control your shadow. You control what it will do next.

If you want a plate held down over there, you have to go and stand on it yourself, seconds before you need it — then walk away and be somewhere else when your own past arrives to press it. So you spend the game doing things that look pointless, knowing they are the solution to a problem you have not reached yet.

And your shadow is not a picture. It is a real thing in the world:

• It presses plates and flips switches

• Crouch, and seconds later it is a step you can climb

• It stands in your way, and if it catches you, you start again

• And inside the light, it is not there at all

There is no record button and no rewind. The delay runs whether you are ready or not, which makes it feel closer to being chased than to a quiet puzzle box.

Sixteen levels:

• Ten that teach, one idea each: the plate, the platform, the obstacle, the sacrifice, the switch your past flips back, the light, and two shadows at two different delays at once

• Six hard levels that put all of it together

The difficulty is in understanding, not speed: no timer running down, and no level that punishes a moment spent thinking.

The setting is contemporary Egypt. Everything dark in the background is a photograph of a real place, cut to a silhouette and layered, in a dust storm at sunset.

• Free, with no ads and no purchases

• Your progress is saved: close it and come back where you were

• On-screen touch buttons, or a keyboard

• Plays offline

Made by one developer, one day a week.