Ed Caspersen

Tessance User Guide

A complete walkthrough of everything Tessance can do. For quick fixes to common issues, see Troubleshooting.

The Goal

Every puzzle is a small board of lenses, each holding an amount of light. A study gives you a target arrangement, and your job is to move light between the lenses until the board matches it.

You never create or destroy light; you only move it. Each discipline moves it a different way, but the thinking carries over, which is the whole idea of Tessance.

A Course of Study

Tessance is built like a curriculum rather than a set of levels. It has three disciplines, and each teaches the same five concepts, six studies at a time:

  • Concepts (in order): Single Influence, Multiple Influence, Gradients, Reflection, Regions.
  • Studies: six per concept, growing in difficulty. Thirty studies make up one discipline, and the three disciplines together are ninety studies.

Because every discipline walks the same five concepts, what you learn in one is a running start in the next.

For exactly what changes from one study to the next, see Studies and Levels.

The Three Disciplines

Orbit

Light travels around a lens’s orbit. Tapping a lens sends light stepping around its ring; a direction control (or a long press) reverses the way it travels. Orbit is where the five concepts are introduced, and its first three concepts are free.

Pressure

Light moves between a lens and its neighbours. Pressing a lens sends one unit of its light outward into each neighbour; the inverted direction (via the direction control or a long press) draws one unit in from each neighbour instead. It is exactly conservative: nothing beyond the tapped lens’s neighbours moves.

A lens with nothing left to give, or a neighbour with no room to receive, answers with a brief ring of light rather than moving. That is the mechanic working, not a bug.

Tide

Tide’s move is global. A single swipe shifts values across the whole board along one of its three axes at once, so you are thinking about the entire arrangement rather than a single lens.

Controls

  • Tap a lens to make its move (send light around its orbit in Orbit, push it outward in Pressure).
  • Long-press a lens, or use the on-screen direction control, to make the inverted move (reverse the orbit, or draw light inward).
  • Swipe the board in Tide to make its global move along one of the three axes.
  • Target (the eye icon): on a study that states an exact goal, touch and hold the eye to see that goal laid over the field, then release to return. Objectives with many valid answers, like Reflection, state everything in the instruction, so they carry no eye.
  • Completing a study lights the board up; the next study is a tap away.

Hints

If a study has you stuck, a hint points you toward a useful move without solving the puzzle for you.

  • You hold up to three hints at once, shared across the whole game.
  • A used hint slot refills on its own over time (about every half hour), whether or not the app is open, so patience brings them back.
  • Tapping the hint button with an empty bank shows a card explaining that you hold three, that one returns every thirty minutes, and roughly how long until the next. It is not a purchase prompt. Hints are never sold.

Progress

Your position in the curriculum, the studies you have completed, and your records are all saved automatically.

Reviewing a mastered concept

Once you have finished a concept, tapping it on the Home screen opens its record rather than the next study. From there a Level menu lists the studies you have completed, and picking one starts a fresh board at that level. Reviews are for practice: they never advance the course, and they never block it.

Saving and resuming

Nothing you start is lost. A study is written to disk after every move, so force-quitting, updating iOS, or backing out all return you to the exact position, with your undo history intact.

One review is kept at a time. Beginning a different review lets the previous one go; while a review is held, its record offers Resume Study.

Across your devices

If you are signed in to iCloud, your course studies and the review you are keeping sync between your Apple devices, so you can put the phone down and pick the iPad up mid-study. If two devices hold the same study, the one played further wins.

An incoming change lands gently. The study you are on catches up in place, without leaving the board; a different study waits until you are back on the Home screen. A field is never rearranged while you are working on it: that is deliberate, not a delay.

Sync takes a few seconds; it is not instantaneous. (See the Privacy Policy for exactly what syncs.)

Settings

Appearance

  • Theme: System, Light, or Dark.

Representation

Choose how each lens shows the amount of light it holds. This is an accessibility feature as much as a preference:

  • Color: read the value by hue.
  • Numbers: read the value as a number.
  • Color and Numbers: both at once.
  • Notches: read the value as notches around the lens, independent of color.

Audio and Haptics

  • Music: toggle the soundtrack, with a volume slider.
  • Sound Effects: a volume slider for the study sounds.
  • Haptics: toggle the touch feedback.

Purchase

  • Full Enrollment: buy the one-time unlock.
  • Restore Purchases: re-apply a previous purchase on a new device or after reinstalling.

Free vs Full Enrollment

Tessance is free to start, and the free portion is a real course, not a demo. There are no ads and no interruptions.

A single one-time purchase, Full Enrollment, opens the rest of the game. It is not a subscription.

  Free Full Enrollment
Orbit First three concepts (Single Influence, Multiple Influence, Gradients), 18 studies All five concepts, 30 studies
Pressure Locked All 30 studies
Tide Locked All 30 studies
Total studies 18 90
Hints, settings, iCloud sync Full Full
Ads None None

Locked concepts and disciplines still appear so you can see the whole course; opening any locked study leads to the enrollment screen.

Need Help?

Still stuck? Email nospam@edcaspersen.com.