How to play

TL;DR click the thing that appears twice

The aim in Cortextual is to find and click on the symbol that appears in both the left and right circle. You can click on either of the two symbols.

There are two types of games: Daily, and Freeplay.

In the Daily game, the goal is to find the letters that make up today's word. Each time you find a letter, the difficulty is increased. If you don't find the word in time, you can keep retrying — each day's word game will play in the same order. The word changes at midnight UTC.

In Freeplay, there are multiple levels, each containing 10 symbols to find. The symbols can be either letters, numbers, or emoji. Things gets harder with each level.

You have 10 seconds to find each symbol. Clicking on the wrong answer has no direct consequences, but disables you for a moment, and can affect your game/level rating.

Helping - or hindering you - during the game are wildcards that randomly appear during the game. You are first warned of an impending wildcard by a black card with a question mark, and after the next symbol you find, the card will flip over and the wildcard will be activated. After 10 seconds during the Daily Game or 20 seconds during Freeplay, the card will flash, warning you that it will be deactivated after the next found symbol. I did think about including here a list of wildcards and the effect they have on the game, but I decided that it should be a surprise.

Once you complete the Daily Game or a level in Freeplay, you will be given a star rating. The rating is based on how fast you find the symbols and if you click on any wrong symbols. If you reckon you could do it better, you can give it another go.

Frequently mentioned things

The game looks weirder than stalagmites

Cortextual requires a very modern browser — at least versions 110 of Chrome or Firefox, or version 16 of Safari.

The game runs slower than stalactites

It can be quite heavy going on older devices due to its use of multiple layers of opacity and blend modes as well as my frankly terrible code. If the game is running slowly, click on the cog in the bottom left corner, and click on the HQ/LQ button to change the quality. This can only able be changed on the title screen.

I found a bug

Not surprised. I bet the game is full of them. If you see something unexpected, let me know using one of the methods below — preferably with a screenshot and some sort of an indication of what you were doing when it happened.

How do I reset everything?

You can reset your settings and scores by going to https://cortextual.net/reset.html and clicking on the reset button.

This reminds me of Dobble/Spot It

Never heard of it.

Credits

Cortextual is made by Dave ‘Bagpuss’ Forsey. Contact me here: Mail BlueSky

Acknowledgements:
Sound effects by Jorge Guillen
Music by Deer Lover
Much love to Rob Manuel, Rico Monkeon and Matt Round for their support.