The rules of the level are spelled out in pushable word-blocks, rearrange them to change what you are, what wins and what blocks, then solve two mirrored worlds at once.
Was this fun?
How to play
The rules of each level are written on the board in pushable blocks. Words laid out as a noun, then IS, then a property — read left to right or top to bottom — become an active rule, and rearranging those word blocks rewrites what everything in the level does. The word tiles are themselves objects you push around, so the rules are part of the puzzle rather than above it.
Three adjacent cells reading NOUN IS PROPERTY form a rule, horizontally or vertically.
Properties decide behaviour: what you control, what blocks you, what pushes, and what wins.
Text tiles always push, whatever the rules say, so you can always rearrange them.
Breaking a rule turns it off immediately — including the rule that says what you are.
After the rule set changes there is a short cooldown during which you cannot edit it again, so a rewrite commits you for a few moves.
Controls
Desktop: Arrow keys or WASD to move, U to undo, R to reset.
Phone & tablet: use the on-screen direction pad and the Undo / Reset buttons, touch supported.
Game modes
Daily: one shared seeded puzzle per day
Practice: a library of hand-built levels to work through
Tips & strategy
Read the board as a sentence before you move anything. The solution is usually a rule that is not there yet rather than a route that is.
Breaking a rule is as powerful as making one. A wall that stops you only stops you while its rule holds.
Mind the cooldown. A rewrite you cannot undo for several moves is a commitment, so make the second change before the first if order matters.
Never destroy the rule that defines you without another one ready. Losing it is the fastest way to lose the level.
Push words out of a line rather than across the board. The shortest solution is often moving one tile one square.
What you'll learn
Edicts is a rule-rewriting, block-pushing puzzle where the laws themselves are editable words, a workout in systems thinking.
Skills: rule manipulation, logical reasoning, systems thinking, problem-solving
Best for: roughly grades 6–12 (ages 11+)
For parents & teachers: changing the rules to solve the puzzle.
Origins
Rules written on the board as pushable word blocks — a noun, then IS, then a property — is the mechanic of Baba Is You, by the Finnish developer Arvi Teikari. It began as a demo for the 2017 Nordic Game Jam and was released on 13 March 2019.
The idea it teaches, almost incidentally, is one of the deepest in computing: that a program's instructions are data, stored in the same place and editable by the same means as anything else it operates on.
This version adds a twinned mirror world, so a rule rewritten on one board also rewrites the other. That pushes the same lesson further — the edit is no longer local, which is exactly the hazard that makes self-modifying code both powerful and feared.
About Edicts
Edicts is an original free browser puzzle in the rule-rewriting block-pushing genre, where the laws are editable words, extended here with a twinned mirror world. Built in-house for PlayPendium.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
