Equilibrium Tug
Shift a reversible reaction to hit a yield target, with Le Chatelier's principle as the rulebook.
4
levels3–12 min
a run, player-paced8
movesNo timer
player-paced, always
Equilibrium Tug
Shift a reversible reaction to hit a yield target, with Le Chatelier's principle as the rulebook.
A reversible reaction sits at equilibrium in a vessel held at a temperature and a pressure. Each move plays one card — heat, cool, compress, expand, add a reactant, draw a product off, add catalyst — and the vessel relaxes to its new equilibrium. Reach the target yield within the move budget. One card never moves the marker.
Levels
4 levelsThe tag on each level says how it gets harder. Levels gate on ideas, not on each other — jump wherever it gets interesting.
What decides the outcome
The game never restates the science — it imports it. These are the model layers that do the deciding.
The gas-phase equilibria with their standard ΔH° and ΔS°, K at a temperature (ΔG° = −RT ln K), the equilibrium composition at a held temperature and pressure, and each catalyst bed's light-off temperature. The game states no shift rule of its own: every move is the solver's answer.
Why it teaches
The author's own delete-the-science argument: remove this game's substrate and there is nothing left to choose.
Every card is a prediction about Q and K: whether a stress pushes the vessel forward depends on the sign of ΔH° and on the moles of gas each side carries, and removing the substrate leaves seven indistinguishable buttons. The catalyst card spends a move to teach that K does not know a catalyst exists, and the industrial levels make the learner pay for compression and stop at the bed's light-off, which is why real plants run warm rather than cold.
Accessibility
The contract's declarations, stated before you commit to a run.
Keyboard
Playable start to finish from the keyboard.
Screen reader
Every move is narrated — the narration is the state, not a description of a picture.
Motion
Reduced-motion: consequences render statically.
Audio
Silent — no sound, and nothing on screen moves on its own.