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Shelf Life

A doodled arcade dodger set in a supermarket after closing time. You are one inch tall and the groceries have woken up: collect every item on your list, then run for the cart at the end of the aisle while feral oranges, hopping soup cans, lunging pickle jars, spinning baguettes, shaken soda and a melon that never stops following you try to flatten you. Three hearts an aisle, 50 aisles to the exit, progress saved as you clear them.

▶ Play Shelf LifeWASD or arrow keys, or touch and hold where you want to go · Space or Enter to continue · progress saved in your browser

SHELF
LIFE

You are one inch tall. The store is closed and the groceries are awake. Finish your list, then run for the cart.

☐ LIST:

apple 1/1

golden banana 1/1

cheese wedge 1/1

AISLE 1: PRODUCE · 50 aisles · open the store

How to play

The store is closed, you are one inch tall, and the stock has woken up. Every aisle gives you a short shopping list: pick up each item lying on the floor, then run for the cart parked at the far right. You have three hearts. Every grocery that touches you takes one, and at zero you are CAUGHT!, with the choice to retry the aisle or go back to the picker.

Move with WASD or the arrow keys. With a finger or a mouse, press and hold anywhere and you walk toward the pointer, faster the further away it is. You can steer while you hold, so the fastest way through a crowd is usually a long, smooth arc rather than a series of jabs. On the menu and the end of aisle screens, Space or Enter does what the buttons do: open the store, retry, or move on.

A live aisle: your list items sit inside dashed rings, shelves block the floor, the cart waits on the right, and the groceries are already moving. The crosshair is where your finger is pulling you.

Items first, then the cart

The cart is labelled exit and ignores you while anything is still on the list. Clear the list and it turns green, starts pulsing a dashed ring, and reads ESCAPE!. Touch it and the aisle is done. Nothing stops mid-run, so the walk back is usually the dangerous half.

Clearing the list flips the cart open. Everything hunting you is still hunting you, so plan the route home before you grab the last item.

Reading the HUD

The list runs along the top with a count per item type, struck through once that type is complete. Your remaining hearts sit top right, and the aisle you are in is named underneath. The small aisles button drops you back to the aisle picker at any time.

Two of three hearts left, the apples already ticked off, halfway through aisle 14.

The list

Six groceries do the rounds, two per aisle, matched to the aisle theme. Each one sits inside a dashed ring: walk into the ring and it is yours.

What is hunting you

Six kinds of grocery, unlocked as the aisles go on. They each move in their own way, and the trick to a clean run is knowing which one you can walk past and which one you have to bait.

Feral orange (aisle 1 on). Rolls in a straight line forever, bouncing off the walls and the shelves. Predictable, but there are a lot of them and they never slow down.

Soup can (aisle 2 on). Sits still, then squashes down for a moment, which is its tell, then hops at where you were standing when it launched. Keep moving through the squash and it lands behind you.

Baguette (aisle 3 on). Drifts slowly along one axis, spinning end over end, and it is longer than it looks. It bounces off the aisle walls but passes straight through shelves, so a shelf is no cover from it.

Pickle jar (aisle 5 on). Territorial. It drifts back to its own patch of floor, and the moment you stray within a few steps it lunges hard, then needs a beat to recover. Dodge the lunge and you can stroll past it.

Shaken soda (aisle 8 on). Pauses, then fires off in a straight dash, roughly half the time aimed at you and half the time completely at random, ricocheting off the walls. The one grocery you cannot really read.

Melon (aisle 11 on). Big, slow, and permanently accelerating toward you. It never stops and it never loses interest, so treat it as a timer: the longer you take, the closer it is.

Shelves are cover, and a trap

Shelves block you and almost everything chasing you, so putting one between yourself and a melon or a pickle stalls it. Nothing ever loses interest, though: it just takes the long way round. Oranges and soda cans bounce off shelves at new angles, and the baguette passes straight through them. Hugging a shelf in a busy aisle is how you get pinned.

Aisles, hearts and progress

There are 50 aisles and ten themes that cycle through them, from PRODUCE and CANNED GOODS up to CHECKOUT, each with its own signature grocery and a one line warning as the aisle starts. Later aisles get longer lists (up to nine items), more shelves, more attackers and a steady speed creep, so aisle 50 runs about half again as fast as aisle 1.

The frozen aisle is slippery

Aisle 5, and every tenth aisle after it, is FROZEN AISLE, where the floor friction drops and you keep sliding after you stop steering. Brake early, aim wide, and do not commit to a gap you cannot slide out of.

A hit costs a heart, throws you clear of whatever hit you, and leaves you flashing and untouchable for a moment. Hearts refill at the start of every aisle, so there is nothing to save them for: spend one to get through a jam rather than losing the run to a corner. Cleared aisles are ticked green on the picker and saved in your browser, and you can jump into any of the 50 at any time.

The aisle picker, showing the first two of its five rows. Green and ticked means cleared, and any tile is playable whenever you like.

Tips

Grab the far items first. Finishing the list next to the cart beats a long, panicked walk back.
Keep drifting. Standing still is what feeds the soup cans a clean shot at you.
Let a lunging pickle jar commit, then walk through the space it left.
Use your invincibility flash: take the hit and cross the crowd while it lasts, rather than getting cornered.
The melon is a clock. If it is close, forget the tidy route and take the cart.
On ice, steer against your slide before you turn, and give the shelves a wide berth.

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