Whatever pad you plug in, the game names its own buttons. A PlayStation pad shows the shapes — ✕ to jump, □ to slash, △ to ride — and an Xbox pad shows A X Y. The buttons on screen always match the one in your hands.

Two can share one keyboard: player 1 on WASD, player 2 on OKL;. Press Enter to join — or just pick up a controller.

One phone, one player. Turn it sideways to play. A friend with a Bluetooth controller can press START to join, but you share the one screen. Playing across two phones is coming later.

Move — left thumb anywhere on the left half, and drag. Jump A, slash X, clan B, ride Y, run hold ZR. Tap the map to zoom it, and tap the sin & cos board in the Dojo to hide it.

Six clans, six powers. Swear at a shrine and the clan's power is yours straight away. Swap any time at another shrine — and clan powers stack on top of your orbs.

• Thunderpaw

  

  Run faster Sunstreak · Siamese “fastest kittens on any island”

• Riverclaw

  

  Longer katana Rippleclaw · Turkish Van “never walks around a puddle”

• Shadowtail

  

  Triple jump Duskcoat · Tuxedo “you never hear them coming”

• Windwhisker

  

  Huge dragon breath Galemane · Maine Coon “loudest paws in the sky”

• Icewhisker

  

  Sense mischief Snowmantle · Himalayan “finds what everyone else walked past”

• Pandapaw

  

  Raise a panda Bambooheart · Ragdoll “never hurries, always arrives”

Pandapaw are the odd ones out. They hand out a job, not a power — cut bamboo, and something very small follows you home. See Raise a panda, below.

Join Pandapaw on the bamboo island, then cut 20 bamboo and a cub follows you. Cut 20 more and it grows big enough to ride — fast, and its claw cuts four canes at once.

⚠ Don't chop down ALL the bamboo too early! Nothing you cut grows back. You need canes left to grow a big panda — and only a big panda's claw can crack the boulder hiding a dragon ball.

One glowing star on each of the seven islands. Only the first is in the open — the rest are locked: breathe fire on the frozen one, crack a boulder with a panda's claw, fly to a spire top, triple-jump up floating shards. Each tells you what it wants.

Collect all seven and Ryuuseki, a huge green dragon, appears. Two ride him — one flies, the second aims his seven beams. That second seat is the big job, not tagging along.

Knock over 80% of everything and Mr. Satan builds a fighting arena in the sky. Find him in town, walk up together, say yes, and his griffin flies you there. Then you fight each other — pick a league first with three or four players.

This is the only place fighting hurts anyone. Everywhere else in the world, you can't damage each other at all.

Winning pays. Everyone on the winning side takes home a purse — enough for one orb from the dealer. Knocking things over only pays once, so the arena is how you earn more points, as many times as you like.

Little animals scurry across the ring — during the fights, and especially in the calm break between rounds (the feast). Catching one to eat is how you get health back, and whoever won a round keeps the health she has left — so the break is her chance to top up. You can snack mid-fight too, but you have to hold still, so it's risky.

How to eat: first slash an animal to daze it (stars spin over its head). Then stand right next to it, keep still, and hold the Slash button — your kitten sits down and eats. Let go, or get hit, and it wriggles free.

Knock over everything (100%) and the Kotodama wake up: eight kinds of power-up orb hidden across the islands, and you can wear up to eight at once.

They're scattered across the whole world, so explore it all again — and watch the mini-map, where each one shows as a little ring in its own colour and vanishes once it's picked up. That makes the map a checklist for the last few. How many are out there depends on the party:

• 1–2 players — 8 orbs (one of each kind)
• 3 players — 12 orbs
• 4 players — 16 orbs

Four kinds stack to make you stronger:

• 疾 Gale — run faster
• 斬 Long Cut — longer katana
• 剛 Adamant — more health in the ring
• 跳 Leap — an extra jump

Wear two of a kind for double, four for quadruple — and your clan power adds on top. The other four orbs are special moves — see Special abilities. There are no spares, so a second of anything is bought or traded for.

Four orbs are brand-new moves, on buttons you already use:

A dealer opens a stall in the market and buys and sells orbs for the points you earn knocking things over. He's dear on purpose — a fair share of the world's points buys about three orbs — and he stocks the four stackable kinds plus one of each special move. Selling gives some points back, and it's the only way to free up a slot when all eight are full.

Out of points? Win in the arena. Each win pays a purse worth one orb, so the ring is how you keep buying — see The arena.

Trade with each other too. Open CHARACTER PROFILE — from the pause menu or the stall — and everyone gets her own cursor. Offer an orb, and both of you confirm before it moves, so nobody can take one off you. You can put points on the table as well.

West of town, a whole island is a giant unit circle on graph paper. Walk on and you become the point — the game draws your angle θ and the two sides labelled sin θ and cos θ, live, from the numbers that move you. A board plots both waves as you walk, all on its own — nothing to switch on.

Why it's here: I built the Dojo to teach my nieces that maths — even geometry and trig — isn't scary. It's fun, and it's real: the orbs draw their own sin/cos as they circle you. — Uncle Rich

⚠ Progress is NOT saved between sessions. You can't save your build or setup — every new game starts from scratch.

Restart or close the tab and clans, stars, orbs, points and mischief all reset. Only three things are remembered on this computer: the record board (high scores), your controller calibration, and your on-screen-stick setting. So finish an adventure in one sitting!