All twelve Bitfold Originals: what each game is and how to play it

The Bitfold Originals are the twelve games that come with Bitfold, our retro game console app for iPhone and iPad. Bitfold is free on the App Store, with no ads, accounts or tracking. We wrote all twelve for Bitfold, each with its own music and characters, and they run from a platformer and a top-down adventure to mini golf, a daily puzzle and a virtual pet. Sprout’s Quest, Prism Drop and Noodle also play free in the browser at bitfold.9io.ai/play, so you can try those first.

We wrote each Original in C with GBDK-2020, an open-source kit for 8-bit consoles, and built it as a real cartridge image, so it also runs on original handheld hardware. Our post on making new 8-bit games with GBDK-2020 covers how. Bitfold 1.0 came with ten when it reached the App Store on 5 November 2026, and Bitfold 1.1 added Paper Harbor and Pockling on 6 November.

This guide starts with a table of all twelve, then gives each game’s controls, how much there is and one tip that follows from its rules. It ends with which one to play first.

The twelve Bitfold Originals at a glance

The table follows the order of Bitfold’s shelf.

Every Original saves its high scores or progress on the cartridge. Paper Harbor and Pockling follow the real date, and Bitfold sets their clock to your phone’s local time when they start, without going online. The numbers in this guide come from each game’s source code and design notes as they shipped in Bitfold 1.1.

Sprout’s Quest, Lantern Keep and Nova Courier: the action games

Sprout’s Quest is a side-scrolling platformer. You guide Sprout, a little seedling, from the Sunny Meadow through the Mushroom Caves and the Windy Cliffs to the Moonlit Garden, one level per world, each 12 to 13 screens wide with a checkpoint halfway. B runs and A jumps, higher the longer you hold it, and pressing A again in mid-air starts a leaf flutter that slows your fall. You can stomp most enemies, but jump over the spiky snail. Every level hides three golden seeds, some at the end of passages that look like solid earth. A seed is saved the moment you touch it, so one on a risky ledge stays found even if the jump costs you a life.

Lantern Keep is a top-down adventure that moves a screen at a time. As Wick, the youngest lamplighter, you relight the five beacons of a keep that shadows have taken over, across 26 rooms in five wings around a courtyard, with three guardians on the way. A swings your lantern-staff, B uses the current tool and Select switches between the three tools you find. The Spark Flint lights braziers and burns brambles, the Grapple Ribbon pulls you to ring posts across water, and the Hush Bell shatters crystal seals and brings back phantom bridges. Its design notes put a first playthrough at half an hour to an hour. If you push a block into a corner, choose RETRY from the Start menu, which restarts the room from the door you came in by.

Nova Courier is a vertical shooter. Your courier ship carries a newborn star through three sectors of space, each ending with a guardian. Hold A for auto fire, and press B for a smart bomb that clears every enemy bullet and hits everything on screen. You can carry up to five. Kills in a row build a multiplier, from ×2 after 8 to ×8 after 100. Wiping out a formation can drop a capsule, which changes letter about every two seconds between spread shot, rapid fire and an orbit shield, so you can wait for the one you need. Extra ships come at 50,000, 150,000, 300,000 and 500,000 points. Any hit resets the multiplier to ×1, even one the shield absorbs, so on a long chain, dodge as if the shield weren’t there.

Noodle and Brick Bounce: the arcade games

Noodle is a snake game set in a night-market kitchen. You slurp dumplings to grow, and the run ends if you bite the counter or your own tail. Classic mode is endless and speeds up every 5 dumplings, with wrap-around gates opening in the walls at levels 4 and 7. Adventure has ten hand-made stages with three stars each, for clearing the stage, for eating both of its golden dumplings before each vanishes after 7 seconds, and for beating par time. A chili pepper gives 6 seconds of extra speed and double points, and an ice cube 7 seconds of slow motion. The game queues up to three turns, so two quick taps make a tight U-turn on consecutive steps.

Brick Bounce is a block breaker with 15 stages, each a picture made of bricks, from a rainbow to a royal crown. The D-pad moves the paddle, holding B slows it for precise moves, and A launches the ball or fires the laser. The ball leaves the paddle’s edges flat and its middle steeply. New bricks arrive over the first five stages, among them bombs that destroy their eight neighbours. Of the seven power-ups, Shrink is the risky one, a tiny paddle for 15 seconds while every point counts double. Bricks hit before the ball comes back to the paddle form a chain, and a chain of three or more pays chain × (chain − 2) × 10 points, up to 20,000. Four chains of three pay 120 points between them, and one chain of twelve pays 1,200.

Prism Drop and Pixel Postcards: the puzzle games

Prism Drop is a falling-gem puzzle. Pairs of gems drop into a well 7 cells wide and 14 deep, and three or more of a kind in a row, a column or a diagonal shatter. Gems above fall into the gaps and can set off a chain, whose multiplier runs 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 and 20. Each of the five kinds has its own shape, so you can tell them apart without relying on colour. Up on the D-pad slams the pair down, and A and B rotate it either way. Marathon speeds up every 30 gems until level 20, and Sprint times you over 60 gems. A rare prism clears every gem of the kind it lands on, so steer it onto the kind that fills most of the well. On the floor it clears only itself.

Pixel Postcards is a picture-logic game. The numbers beside each row and column give the runs of filled cells in that line, in order, and a solved grid turns into a full-colour postcard. There are 45 puzzles across five destinations, from the Seaside to the Night Sky. Five are 5 × 5, twenty-three are 10 × 10 and seventeen are 15 × 15, and a destination opens once you’ve solved four at the one before. A fills a cell, B marks an X, and holding either while you move paints a stroke. Every puzzle can be solved line by line without guessing, because our puzzle compiler rejects any that can’t. A postcard solved without ever filling a wrong cell earns a ★, and X marks never count against it, so mark freely and fill only the cells you’ve proved.

Turbo Lane, Tidepool Pinball and Pocket Links: racing, pinball and mini golf

Turbo Lane is a pseudo-3D racer on roads that bend and roll over hills. You race seven rivals over three laps against a clock that starts at 34 to 42 seconds and gains 21 to 24 more at the half-lap checkpoint and at the line. A accelerates and B brakes, with an automatic gearbox. Curves push you outwards more the faster you go, and the sand off the road holds you to 100 km/h. The roads are Sunset Coast, Moonlit Dunes and Neon City, with laps of 3.4, 3.1 and 2.8 km, and finishing one in any position opens the next. For a boosted start, tap A on the grid to keep the revs in the upper-middle of their range as GO! appears. Holding A flat out over-revs.

Tidepool Pinball is a single table, two screens tall, set in a sunlit tidepool with crab bumpers, clam targets, a kelp lane and a sunken ship’s ramp. Left on the D-pad or B works the left flipper, and A or right the right one. Select nudges the table, but nudging too often tilts it. You get three balls, and a ball lost in its first 15 seconds comes back. Knocking down all three clams lights the pearl scoop, and a shot into it starts Pearl Hunt, 30 seconds of pearls to shoot. Three ramp shots start Feeding Frenzy, a three-ball multiball. Start each ball with the skill shot. One of the top lanes flashes while the ball sits on the plunger, and plunging it into that lane scores 50,000.

Pocket Links is mini golf over 18 holes on two courses, the flower beds of Sunny Gardens and the neon-lit Moonlight Pier, with pars of 2 to 4 and 53 for the round. It’s the only Original for two players, who share the console and pass it after each hole. Left and right turn the aim, and up and down nudge it by 1/1,024 of a turn. Hold A while the power meter runs up and back down, let go to putt, and press Select to see the whole hole. Water costs a stroke. Our simulator found a route of one or two strokes for every hole. The cup only pulls in a ball that arrives close and slow enough, and a fast one lips out, so on short putts err on the soft side.

Paper Harbor: a new daily puzzle at midnight

Paper Harbor came with Bitfold 1.1. A new harbor opens every day at midnight, local time, the same for everyone. Each press of the D-pad is a gust of wind, and every boat that isn’t moored sails that way until it bumps into the shore, a rock or another boat. Dock each boat at the pier with its colour and symbol in as few gusts as you can. Monday’s harbor has two boats and a par of 4 or 5, and Sunday’s has four boats and a par of 10 to 12. The result card never shows the harbor, so you can share it without spoiling it, and a stamp book keeps your streak. B undoes a gust, but undone gusts still count, so plan the whole sequence before you press. A boat stops right behind another, so a boat in the right place can stop the next one on its pier.

Pockling: the virtual pet cartridge

Pockling, the other game 1.1 added, is a virtual pet you raise with the D-pad and buttons. Each of the six patterned eggs holds one breed, from the Kitling to the Drakling, and the game names it as you choose. Your Pockling lives in real time, so its needs for food, cleaning, sleep, fun and love keep falling slowly even while the game is off, and it never dies or runs away. You feed it, pet it, wash it, put it to bed, walk it in the park and play Snack Catch, 40 seconds of falling snacks in which honey is worth three and a burr costs three seconds. Each breed has a favourite food to find. It grows from a baby to a kid after 3 days of care and is grown up after 7. A day of care takes two different kinds of care on one date, such as a meal and a bath, so feeding it twice only counts once.

The Pockling app is a separate version, free on the App Store and in the browser at bitfold.9io.ai/pockling. It’s played by touch, with its own foods, games and rules for growing up.

How to play three Bitfold games free in the browser

Sprout’s Quest, Prism Drop and Noodle play free at bitfold.9io.ai/play, from the same cartridge images the app ships, with no sign-up. Tap a game on the console’s screen, or use the arrow keys, with X as A and Z as B. You get five minutes of play a day across the three, counted only while a game is on and the tab is visible, and the allowance resets at midnight UTC. Progress isn’t saved in the browser. It works in a phone’s browser too, which makes it a quick way to try these free retro games for iPhone before installing anything.

The other nine are only in the app, which has no time limit and adds save states, rewind and fast-forward. Our post on running an emulator in the browser explains how the player works.

Which Bitfold Original to play first

• To try one before you install anything, play Sprout’s Quest, Prism Drop or Noodle in the browser.
• For a game with an ending, start with Sprout’s Quest, then play Lantern Keep and Nova Courier.
• For a few minutes a day, sail Paper Harbor’s daily harbor and look after a Pockling. Both keep a stamp book.
• To chase a high score, pick Prism Drop’s Marathon, Noodle’s Classic mode, Nova Courier, Tidepool Pinball or Brick Bounce.
• For puzzles you can take slowly, play Pixel Postcards. It records your time but never runs out.
• With a friend and one phone, play Pocket Links.
• To race the clock, play Turbo Lane, and practise the launch.

For more, read how Paper Harbor works and how to hit par, what Bitfold 1.1 added and how to play backups of cartridges you own.

Frequently asked questions