Dossier: Memory Leak — The Art of Partial Recall

The Mechanic

Cells illuminate on a grid. They go dark. You recall which ones were lit. Tap them. Submit.

That is Memory Leak. It sounds trivial. It is not. By Act 5, you are recalling 20+ positions across a 10x10 grid with 3 colors and a 95% accuracy threshold. Your visuospatial working memory is the only tool you have, and its limits are more precise than you think.

Beyond Simple Recall

The classic memory grid — see cells, recall cells — has been done. Memory Leak goes further with 3 design decisions that transform the mechanic.

Partial Recall

Starting in the mid-acts, not all lit cells go dark. Some remain visible as anchors — faintly illuminated at 20% opacity. Your task is to recall only the hidden cells. The anchors provide spatial reference points but also create interference: the visible pattern competes with the memorized pattern in working memory.

Multi-Color Recall

From Act 3 onward, cells illuminate in different colors — cyan, amber, magenta. You must recall not just where the cells were, but which color each one was. This doubles the memory load: position AND color for each cell.

A color picker appears below the grid. Select a color, then tap cells. Switch colors. Submit. The interaction adds a planning dimension: which color do you recall first? Do you encode by position or by color group?

Accuracy Thresholds

Memory Leak does not use lives in the traditional sense. Instead, each level has an accuracy threshold. Early levels require 80% accuracy — you can miss a few cells and still advance. By Act 8, the threshold is 95%. Miss more than 1 cell in 20 and you replay the level with a new seed.

The threshold system creates a different psychology than lives. You are not afraid of dying. You are trying to be precise enough. The pressure is on accuracy, not survival.

The 10 Acts

| Act | Grid | Colors | Density | Reveal | Threshold | The Challenge | |-----|------|--------|---------|--------|-----------|--------------| | 1-2 | 4x4 to 5x5 | 1 | Sparse | Simultaneous | 80% | Learn the mechanic | | 3-4 | 5x5 to 6x6 | 2 | Medium | Simultaneous | 85% | Color encoding | | 5-6 | 7x7 to 8x8 | 2-3 | Medium | Sequential (slow) | 90% | Temporal encoding | | 7-8 | 8x8 to 9x9 | 3 | Dense | Sequential (fast) | 95% | Capacity ceiling | | 9-10 | 9x9 to 10x10 | 3 | Dense | Sequential (fast) | 95% | Maximum load |

Sequential Reveal

Starting in Act 5, cells do not illuminate simultaneously. They light up one at a time — slow at first, then faster. This transforms the task from a single snapshot memory challenge to a temporal encoding challenge. You must build the pattern incrementally as cells reveal, updating your mental map with each new cell.

Sequential reveal at fast speeds (Act 7+) pushes encoding rate — can you add a new position+color to your mental map every 200 milliseconds while retaining the previous ones?

The 8 Palettes

Each act pair uses a different color palette:

1. Cyan — single-color, high contrast
2. Amber — warm single-color
3. Cyan + Amber — 2-color encoding begins
4. Cyan + Magenta — different color pair, same challenge
5. Cyan + Amber + Magenta — 3-color encoding
6. Muted Blues — lower contrast, harder discrimination
7. Near Colors — similar hues, color discrimination under pressure
8. Minimal Contrast — maximum difficulty

The palette progression tests 2 things: color memory capacity (how many color categories can you maintain?) and color discrimination (can you distinguish similar hues under memory load?).

The 6 Grid Shapes

Memory Leak does not always use square grids. 6 grid shapes appear across the 100 levels:

• ROW — elongated horizontal
• COL — elongated vertical
• L — L-shaped region
• WIDE — wide rectangle
• TALL — tall rectangle
• SQ — standard square

Grid shape affects spatial encoding strategy. A square grid allows chunking by quadrant. An L-shaped grid disrupts symmetric chunking, forcing less efficient encoding strategies.

What Memory Leak Measures

Visuospatial working memory has a well-established capacity limit — typically 4-7 items, depending on how "item" is defined and whether chunking is possible. Memory Leak probes this limit directly.

Your performance on Memory Leak tells you:

• Your raw capacity — how many position+color bindings you can maintain
• Your encoding speed — how quickly you can add items to working memory (sequential reveal)
• Your interference resistance — how well you maintain memory in the presence of visible anchors
• Your color memory — how many color categories you can encode simultaneously

These are specific, measurable dimensions of visuospatial working memory. They improve with practice. The improvement is visible in your level progression.