SlashZ — Play Free Online

SlashZ turns a pair of scissors into a puzzle tool. Each level hands you a flat shape with a few beetles sitting on it, and your job is to cut that shape down until every beetle ends up in the same half. There is no timer pressure and no enemy to dodge, so the whole game comes down to deciding where the next line should go.

It is a slower, more thoughtful pick than most of what sits around Doodle Jump. If you arrived for the jump-and-dodge reflexes of the headline game, SlashZ is the palate cleanser: a few quiet minutes of looking at a shape, imagining where a straight cut will fall, and watching the result. It runs in the browser with nothing to install.

The game is published on Poki and made by NoPowerup, a studio based in Vietnam.

How to play

Press (or tap), then swipe across the shape the way you would drag a blade through paper. The cut follows your swipe, and the piece splits where it crosses. Keep slicing and discarding until all the beetles share one remaining piece. The listing for this page mentions arrow keys and WASD, but the game itself is played with the mouse or touch alone: click, then swipe to cut.

A level ends when the leftover shape holds every beetle together, so the goal is not to cut as much as possible. It is to cut so the beetles end up on the same side.

Tips

• Look at where the beetles are before you touch anything. Find the pair that is furthest apart; any good solution has to keep both on the same piece.
• Prefer long, confident swipes that clearly cross the whole shape. Short strokes are easy to misjudge.
• Check which side of a cut gets removed before committing. A cut that looks harmless can slice away the half that holds a beetle.
• If a level feels stuck, restart it rather than forcing it. Because the shape shrinks with every cut, one bad early line limits everything after it.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

For another puzzle to chew on, Fireboy and Watergirl asks two characters to cooperate through temple rooms. Helix Jump is also a simple one-input game, but it is about timing rather than planning. Bouncy Basketball is a good pick if you want something more reflex-driven after a few rounds of cutting.

SlashZ suits short sessions on a laptop or Chromebook with a mouse or trackpad, and it is a relaxing change of pace between faster games.