Bad Signal

One robot. One exit. And somebody in the room is lying.

Bad Signal is a couch social-deduction platformer for 4-8 players. A shared robot has to reach the exit of a hazard-filled 2D level, but nobody drives it. Once per round, every player secretly sends it a single command from their phone. The moves then fire in a random order while the whole room watches the result on the TV. Simple teamwork, in theory. The problem is that one or two of you are hackers, and their job is to wreck the run without getting caught.

Phones are the controllers. Scan the QR code on the screen and you're in. Nothing to install.

Everyone steers it, in secret

Each round you pick one move: jump, left, right, down, or wait. Nobody sees anyone else's choice. The TV plays the whole sequence back in a shuffled order, and the only thing you know for certain is your own slot number. Sometimes the plan comes together and the robot chains bounce pads like it knew the way home. Sometimes it walks straight off a ledge and the room erupts into "who pressed LEFT?!" That argument is the actual game.

One of you is a hacker

A hacker doesn't need special powers to hurt you. One bad move in the sequence looks exactly like an honest mistake. They get powers anyway, on a cooldown: Override quietly swaps someone's move for another, Jam cuts off the tracer's intel for a round, and Frame hands them a convincing lie instead. You're not defenseless, though. Every round one player rotates into the Tracer seat and can privately check what one person actually submitted, and anyone can Encrypt their own signal. If a hacker tries to override an encrypted move, the blocked attempt is announced to the whole room. Now you have evidence. Sort of.

Catch them. Cage them.

After every round the table argues, then votes. Get a majority behind one name and that player goes into the Cage, a signal-proof cell that cuts their link to the robot until the table votes them back out. Cage the right person and the sabotage should stop. Should. A caged hacker can still fire abilities from inside, and they will absolutely use that to argue their innocence. Cage the wrong person and you've benched a teammate for nothing. Either way, everyone gets to spam the prisoner's phone with mocking reactions while they sit there. And if you're truly sure, call the final vote and accuse someone outright: name the last hacker and you win on the spot, name an innocent and the hackers take the game.

Every tick, the world moves

The levels fight back, and they do it on a fixed clock. Projectile beams sweep one cell per tick, crushers slam on a set rhythm, conveyor belts drag the robot along, crumble tiles give way behind it, and bounce pads throw it across the map. The TV telegraphs every lane and arc, so the information is all there. That's exactly what makes it cruel: often the correct move is to wait a beat, and waiting looks identical to a hacker burning your clock.

Beat the budget. Reach the door.

Each level gives the team a fixed budget of rounds. Death doesn't end the run, the robot just respawns at the last checkpoint, but every death burns a round off the budget, and that's the hackers' favorite weapon. Reach the door in time and the operators win. Run dry and the hackers do. Both endings finish the same way: every hacker is unmasked, and the room finds out exactly who has been steering everyone into the spikes all night.

Features

• 4-8 players on a couch. One shared screen, everyone plays from their phone via a QR code. Nothing to install.

• One secret move per player, fired in random order. A co-op platformer where the controls are the mystery.

• Traitors with real tools: Override, Jam and Frame against the Tracer's intel and the Encrypt counter.

• The Cage: a persistent prison, release votes, and an all-or-nothing final accusation.

• A clockwork world: beams, crushers, belts, crumble tiles and bounce pads, all on one deterministic tick.

• Host-tunable setup: 1-2 hackers and 1-2 tracers to fit your table.

• A built-in level editor. Paint a level, playtest it with the real rules engine, share it as a file.