THE TUTORIAL BOSS

 Short description

One boss. Eight hidden rules. Every death is documentation.

 Page description

THE TUTORIAL BOSS is a short ASCII meta-puzzle disguised as a terminal boss fight.

There are no levels to grind, no equipment to collect, and no permanent stat upgrades. The tutorial tells you exactly what to do—and the tutorial is trying to kill you.

Every failed attempt exposes another rule. The boss studies repeated actions. The width of your terminal matters. Hesitation matters. Obedience matters. Even the command used to end a program may mean something different inside the fight.

Your character does not become stronger.

You become better informed.

 Feature

- A complete boss battle in a single executable

- Knowledge-based progression across repeated attempts

- Eight discoverable rules

- Misleading tutorial prompts

- Adaptive counters based on player behavior

- Terminal-width and response-time mechanics

- ASCII interface with optional ANSI color

- Multiple completion ranks

- No external libraries or installation process

- Approximately 20–60 minutes for a first clear

Controls

`A` Attack · `G` Guard · `F` Focus · `W` Wait · `S` Skip · `Q` Quit · `H` Help · `X` Exit

Linux instructions

Extract the ZIP, open a terminal in the folder, and run.

./play.sh

A terminal width of at least 80 columns is recommended.

Source package

A portable C99 source package is included separately for players who want to inspect, compile, or modify the game.

Suggested project settings

- Classification: Game

- Kind: Downloadable

- Release status: Released

- Genre: Puzzle

- Languages: English

- Platforms: Linux

- Suggested tags: ASCII Art, Puzzle, Boss Battle, Difficult, Meta, Text based, Short, Experimental, Dark Humor, Singleplayer

- Accessibility notes: configurable terminal size; color is not required; `NO_COLOR` supported