CosmoTrail

About the startup

CosmoTrail — a calm space slide puzzle In CosmoTrail there are no brakes. Your rocket drifts in a straight line until something stops it — an asteroid, the edge of the grid, a shattering ice chunk. The puzzle is planning a route that collects every crystal on the map and ends exactly at the docking station, ideally in "par" — the mathematically optimal number of moves. One swipe per turn. No time limit. No lives. No dead ends. It sounds simple until you realize you can't just steer around obstacles. You have to use them: bounce off an asteroid at just the right angle, wait a turn for a comet to slide into your path, tunnel through a wormhole that spits you out three cells above where you need to be. Every level is a small logic problem with a real solution — and CosmoTrail proves it. 1000 levels. All solver-verified. A custom-built solver ran on every one of the 1000 campaign levels during authoring. "Par" isn't a designer's rough guess — it's the actual minimum move count. When you earn three stars, you literally found the shortest possible path. When the game says "there is a solution in 7 moves," there really is a solution in 7 moves, and 8 won't do. The campaign starts at gentle 6×6 boards and eventually opens up to 14×14 finales. Mechanics unfold as you progress: Wormholes teleport your rocket mid-drift — pair them up carefully or you'll miss the exit Ice chunks shatter on impact and clear a path, but only once — you have one shot per ice block Comets drift alongside you, moving one cell per turn — sometimes you have to wait a turn for the geometry to line up Crystals must all be collected before docking; miss one and the level restarts Boss levels every 15 levels — larger boards, layered mechanics, deeper solutions The daily puzzle Every day, a new level goes live worldwide — the same level for everyone. You get one shot before you can share your score, so it's genuine. Streaks build up over time. The daily is the soft ritual: sixty seconds of calm before the morning, a small satisfying "click" when you find par, then off to the rest of your day. Your hangar Stars earned across the campaign unlock new ships. There's an alarming UFO. A comet-rider. And, if you get all the way to the end, the legendary astro cat with a rocket strapped to her back. None of this is behind a paywall — every ship is earned by playing. What makes CosmoTrail different Free forever, and I mean it. No ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts, no email capture, no dark patterns, no analytics, no "you're on a streak of 12, don't miss tomorrow!" notification blackmail. You install it, you play it, that's the whole deal. Solver-first design. Most puzzle games invent a "par" that feels achievable and calls it done. CosmoTrail flips the process: the solver runs first, finds the true minimum, and the level ships only if a human can actually reach it. It changes how three stars feels. You didn't beat the game's expectations — you matched math. Playable in the browser, natively on iPhone and iPad, on the Mac too. The web version is a full first-class experience — not a stripped-down demo. On Apple platforms, saves sync via iCloud, so you can start a level on the couch on your iPad and finish it on the train on your phone. No account needed for this — iCloud does the work. Built with SwiftUI, not a wrapped web view. On iOS and macOS this is native SwiftUI, with proper haptics, Game Center leaderboards for the daily puzzle, and no bridging shim between your fingers and the game. Hint that helps, not that punishes. Stuck? Tap "hint" and the game shows you the single best next move. No hint-limit counter. No wait timer. No "watch an ad to get another hint." Undo is unlimited too. The philosophy is: this is a puzzle, we're helping you think, not milking your frustration. What CosmoTrail feels like to play Commutes stop being commutes. You'll solve twenty levels on a train ride from Zurich to Bern without noticing you passed Olten. The daily puzzle becomes the first thing after the first coffee. When you find a par solution — the actual shortest path — the satisfaction is quiet but it stays with you for hours; you'll catch yourself thinking about the geometry over lunch. The game is calm enough to hand your phone to your grandmother at Sunday dinner. It's deep enough that you'll still be finding par on the 14×14 boards weeks later. There's no FOMO if you miss a daily; there's no life to refill; there's no session-length engineering trying to keep you playing when you want to stop. Built by one person, in Switzerland CosmoTrail is a solo indie project. One developer, one designer, one solver-writer — all the same person, working evenings out of Zurich. The whole thing is native SwiftUI on Apple platforms and TypeScript/Canvas on the web, sharing the same level format. The solver is written in TypeScript too, and runs in the browser to verify every level as I edit it.