Every other game on this shelf keeps you on the flat: you dodge, you chase, you circle, you catch. SPRIG is the first one that goes UP. You are a small green someone at the bottom of an old stone well, and the game has exactly one move: leap to the other wall. The arc is fixed and honest, it always lands you a little higher than you left, and the little ring on the far wall shows exactly where this leap ends, gold when the landing is clear, red when a thorn waits. Once you have leapt there is no steering. Where you land was decided the instant you let go, which means every thorn you hit was a choice, and so was every one you missed.
Why it exists
Wall-jump climbing is one of the oldest joys in games, and the shelf did not have it. What SPRIG borrows from the tradition is only the verb; the rest is built the muplu way. You slide slowly down while you cling, so waiting costs height. The cold water below never stops rising, so waiting costs more than height. Thorns come in alternating bands, one wall kind while the other is cruel, and landing a whisker from a thorn without touching it pays a BRUSH, because almost-losing has been the house currency since FLINCH. Before shipping, a robot that leaps only when the landing is clear had to climb sixty leaps without dying, and a robot leaping at random moments had to drown early, three times each. The climb is fair, and the timing is all yours.
One thumb
Tap: you leap the fixed arc to the other wall and cling where you land. That is the entire control scheme, and the entire game.
The well earns its teeth
The first stretch is a safe hello, the early thorn patches are small, and they grow with height. The climb gets exactly as hard as you have climbed.
The strata
The climb is measured in places, not just metres: the moss line, the mushroom shelf, the old bricks, the bat rafters, first daylight. Each one you reach is named on the way up, remembered on the results card, and your best height is drawn on the wall itself as a line to come back for.
Brushes
Landing close to a thorn without touching it is counted and celebrated. Cowardice is safe, courage is scored.
The quiet parts
No account, no ads, nothing following you around. Your best height lives in your own browser. There is no shop and no daily seed yet, on purpose, the same first-release rule COMET shipped under: the pure arcade shape earns its extras only after real hands have climbed it.