Puzzle · Casual · made with AI
A Rock and a Hard Place
Tilt the whole board to roll a rock into a leak before the village floods.
About A Rock and a Hard Place
You tilt a board to roll a rock into a leak and stop a flooding village. The rock can't be picked up, and the villagers stand on the same board, so every tilt moves them too. Tilt gently and the water keeps rising. Tilt hard and you arrive in time, but villagers topple.
Hold the mouse or a finger and move it to tilt, or use arrow keys or WASD. Space hops the rock. Low walls can be hopped as a shortcut, though the landing knocks over everyone nearby. A fallen villager can be nudged back up, but only if you approach slowly.
Ten villages cover meadow, snowfield, desert and night, and all are open from the start. Ice keeps the rock sliding after you stop tilting, while sand makes it slow to start. The last four villages have two rocks and two leaks on one board, so tilting moves both.
Stars reward fewer knocked-over villagers, not speed. A flooded village simply restarts, with no game over screen. A Fast water mode raises the challenge and tracks its own stars. The text is in English and Korean. The creator used Claude Code to write and debug the code and to run an automated playtest that found two impossible stages.
How it was made
Source: AI Browser Game Jam 4 rules (most of each game AI-generated) and the itch.io game page. Evidence: the creator's own account.
- Code by AI
- Part of it
- Engine
- HTML5 Canvas
- Players
- Single player

Controls
- Mouse / finger drag: tilt the board
- Arrow keys / WASD: tilt the board
- Space: hop the rock
- Touch (mobile): jump the rock
- R: restart stage
- M: mute
- Esc: back to village list
Screenshots
Questions about A Rock and a Hard Place
Where can I play A Rock and a Hard Place?
On hf-doodle-studio.itch.io, in a desktop browser. We don't list it for phones.
Who made A Rock and a Hard Place?
hf-doodle-studio made it and entered it in the AI Browser Game Jam 4. They also made Sketching Fish. Their profile here lists both games.
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