ProsperoPuzzles

Latest release: 01.000.010. 50 puzzle games, best-score records, sound effects, a shuffled soundtrack and home-screen selection music, now on the ps5-opengl SDK 1.0.2. Please report problems through GitHub issues.

A native puzzle collection for PlayStation 5 homebrew
Fifty polished logic puzzles in one controller-first library, rendered with OpenGL 4.6 and built for the DualSense.

Demo available by clicking the image below.

Highlights

• 50 games in one library: the 40 puzzles of Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection, 2048, Tenfold, and eight native puzzles: Color Sort, Crowns, Kakuro, Link Up, Nurikabe, Sokoban, Traffic Jam and Trail.
• An A–Z library built for the controller: favorites pinned first, All / Favorites / In progress filters, letter jumps with L2 / R2, and cards that show a live preview of each board.
• One modern skin across every game: anti-aliased OpenGL 4.6 rendering at 1080p60, animated transitions and confetti on every solve.
• Records and progress: best times and scores per game and size, a gold badge on completed games, and games in progress that resume where you left them.
• Sound and music: 47 sound effects, a soundtrack that plays in a new shuffled order at every launch, and looping selection music on the PS5 home screen.
• How to play for everything: every game has its own rules page, plus sizes and difficulties, undo / redo, restart and solve.

Important

ProsperoPuzzles does not run on an unmodified retail console. It is intended for consoles you own with an already configured, compatible homebrew loader. This repository does not include an exploit, proprietary Sony SDK, system module, encryption key, firmware file, or game asset.

Project foundation

Important

Built on the PS5 Native App Boilerplate. ProsperoPuzzles keeps the template's C++20 structure, reproducible clean-room runtime, native FSELF tooling, tests, safe folder deployment and release automation.

Important

Rendering uses ps5-opengl. The app creates an OpenGL 4.6 Core context through EGL and links the ps5-opengl SDK statically. The SDK release is pinned by version and checksum in tools/fetch-opengl-sdk.sh; see OpenGL integration.

Identity	Value
Shell title	ProsperoPuzzles
Title ID	PPSA99006
Category	Game
Current version	01.000.010
Version source	sce_sys/param.json
Writable data	/data/prosperopuzzles (/download0 without filesystem access)

Games

Collection	Games
Simon Tatham's puzzles	Black Box, Bridges, Cube, Dominosa, Fifteen, Filling, Flip, Flood, Galaxies, Guess, Inertia, Keen, Light Up, Loopy, Magnets, Map, Mines, Mosaic, Net, Netslide, Palisade, Pattern, Pearl, Pegs, Range, Rectangles, Same Game, Signpost, Singles, Sixteen, Slant, Solo, Tents, Towers, Tracks, Twiddle, Undead, Unequal, Unruly, Untangle
Native puzzles	Color Sort, Crowns, Kakuro, Link Up, Nurikabe, Sokoban, Traffic Jam, Trail
Number games	2048, Tenfold

Updates, saves and filesystem access

• The app updates itself. Once per launch it asks the homebrew.page catalog whether a newer release is listed, and offers it: Update now downloads the release, checks it, and replaces the app's files once the app has closed. Nothing changes before you say yes, and a failure or a cancel leaves the app as it was. See Updates.
• Saves live in /data/prosperopuzzles: settings, favorites, games in progress, records and the log. They outlast the app and can be backed up over FTP. Saves of earlier versions are brought over at the first start.
• Lapy elevation included. The package carries an exact-title one-shot helper built from upstream PS5-Lapy-JB-Daemon and sends it to the local payload loader on port 9021; loading Lapy separately is not needed. Without a loader the app still runs, with its data in the sandbox. See Storage and filesystem access.

Current status

Version 01.000.010 has been exercised on PS5 hardware: every game generates and plays, the library, settings and records persist across relaunches, and the app presents at a steady 60 FPS with sound effects, music and home-screen selection music. Broader validation across firmware versions, loaders and TVs is welcome through GitHub issues.

Requirements

Build from Linux, WSL, or a Linux CI runner. On Ubuntu, Debian, or WSL:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl git make pkg-config python3 python3-venv tar unzip wget \
  clang-18 clang-format-18 clang-tidy-18 lld-18 ninja-build ccache
make doctor

The build downloads and verifies the public PS5 Payload SDK, zlib, GoogleTest and the ps5-opengl SDK below ignored .deps/ directories. Nothing is installed globally by the project build. See Getting started and Native tooling for clean-machine setup details.

Build

# The app folder and its ZIP: what CI and releases build.
make

Outputs are written to:

dist/PPSA99006/           complete title folder
dist/PPSA99006.zip        folder archive

Useful development gates are:

make test            # host GoogleTest and integration tests
make lint            # formatting, static analysis, metadata, asset and shell checks
make check           # lint + every host test + complete folder build
make host-snapshots  # render library and game screenshots on the host
make audio-check     # validate sound effects and music

GitHub Actions and releases

The Build workflow runs on every pull request, version tag, and manual dispatch (pushes to main build nothing). It:

1. installs the public Linux/PS5 build prerequisites;
2. validates the title ID and contentVersion in sce_sys/param.json;
3. runs lint, GoogleTest and the integration tests;
4. independently reproduces and verifies runtime/libc.prx;
5. builds the app folder and archives it as PPSA99006.zip, every entry stored as 0777; and
6. writes SHA256SUMS for the ZIP and uploads both as the Actions artifact.

Every pull request gets an installable build named by its number and commit: see Pull-request builds.

Pushing a tag equal to contentVersion publishes a GitHub Release with the app-folder .zip and SHA256SUMS, built from the tagged commit. That is the only way a release is made: the workflow builds, attests, and publishes the two files, and files are not attached by hand. If the tag has no release yet, the workflow creates it; if a release exists without a ZIP (notes written in advance, or a draft), it adds the two files and leaves the title and notes alone; if a release already has a ZIP, nothing is replaced and the run ends with a warning.

Install or update

1. Download PPSA99006.zip from the latest GitHub release and verify it with SHA256SUMS. A release ZIP built by GitHub Actions can be checked with the GitHub CLI: gh attestation verify PPSA99006.zip -R blackbearreloaded/ProsperoPuzzles (releases built from now on, not earlier ones).
2. Fully close ProsperoPuzzles.
3. Extract PPSA99006.zip and upload its complete PPSA99006 directory to /data/homebrew/, producing /data/homebrew/PPSA99006/eboot.bin. Do not upload the ZIP itself. If a PPSA99006.ffpfsc from an older version is still in a directory scanned by ShadowMountPlus, delete it first: the image form is no longer built, and a folder and an image of the same title must not both be there.
4. Restart ShadowMountPlus cleanly or restart the PS5, then wait for ShadowMountPlus to rediscover the title before launching it.
5. Launch ProsperoPuzzles and confirm the version in the library header or at the bottom of Settings.

From the next release on, an installed folder copy offers new versions by itself (Updates); the steps above stay valid.

Saved games, records and settings are in /data/prosperopuzzles and are not touched by an update or a reinstall. The home-screen artwork and selection music may stay cached until ShadowMountPlus restarts.

Deploy

For an already-running PS5 FTP service, stage the development folder with:

make deploy PS5_HOST=192.168.1.100

Fully close ProsperoPuzzles before deploying. The deployer writes only the current title below /data/homebrew, uploads through temporary names, and publishes eboot.bin and sce_sys/param.json last.

ProsperoPuzzles never changes PS5 system settings or configures a loader. See Deployment for the development loop and removal.

Controls

Input	Library	In a game
D-pad / left stick	Move between games	Move the cursor (stick: free pointer)
Cross	Play or resume	Primary action
Square	Toggle favorite	Secondary action
Triangle	Game details	Key palette (numbers, letters, colours)
Circle	Back	Back
L1 / R1	Change filter	Undo / redo
L2 / R2	Jump to the previous / next letter (wraps)	—
Options	Settings	Pause (How to play, new game, size, restart, solve)

Settings cover music, sound-effect and interface volume, swapping Cross and Circle, reduced motion, an FPS counter and the display resolution.

Audio

Sound effects live in assets/audio/sfx/ and follow the naming in PLAN.md Appendix A; tools/process-sfx.py trims and levels raw clips.

Background music is a playlist: every song in assets/audio/music/ plays once, in an order shuffled at each launch, and the list starts over after the last song. Music sits at 40% under everything else before the Music slider. Convert songs from any tool with tools/prepare-music.sh <folder> (OGG, 48 kHz, -18 LUFS). The home-screen selection music is sce_sys/snd0.at9, an ATRAC9 loop; create or replace it with ps5-at9-converter.

Source layout

src/main.cpp            display, input, audio and frame loop
src/app/                shell: library, game and settings screens
src/ui/                 library, details, menus, settings, theme and hints
src/games/              game registry, records and the three game families
src/games/sgt/          Simon Tatham puzzle frontend and modern skin
src/games/kit/          shared scene for the native puzzles
src/gfx/                OpenGL 4.6 batch renderer, fonts and canvases
src/audio/              mixer, sound bank and music playlist
src/core/               input, saves, settings, library and version
src/platform/ps5/       EGL display, DualSense and AudioOut
src/third_party/        vendored Tatham puzzles and stb_vorbis
assets/                 fonts, sound effects and music
sce_sys/                param.json, icon, backgrounds and selection music
host/                   host snapshot renderer
tests/                  GoogleTest and Python host tests
docs/                   architecture, setup, testing and integration notes

See Architecture for how the pieces fit together.

Versioning

sce_sys/param.json is the only application identity and release-version source. Its PS5-format contentVersion is read at startup and shown in the library header and Settings, and the release workflow uses it as the tag and release name. Do not add a v prefix.

To publish the next version, raise contentVersion (for example to 01.001.000), pass the local gates, push to main, and push a tag equal to contentVersion; GitHub Actions builds and releases it.

Keep PPSA99006, conceptId and contentId stable for updates to this title. Changing the title ID creates a separate PS5 application with separate saves. See Configuration.

Documentation

Document	Purpose
Changelog	Changes in each version
Getting started	Clean-machine prerequisites and first build
Architecture	Shell, games, rendering and audio flow
Configuration	Identity, versioning and build variables
OpenGL integration	SDK selection and rendering rules
Storage and filesystem access	Where saves live, Lapy elevation, migration
Updates	The update check, the self-update and how it was validated
Testing	Host test boundaries and commands
Pull-request builds	An installable build per pull request: its artifact name, its label file, how to get it
Deployment	Safe folder staging
Release ZIP	The app folder and its ZIP, the only outputs
Troubleshooting	Common build, launch and runtime failures
Platform notes	PS5 filesystem, loader and presentation constraints
Runtime shim	Clean-room libc.prx scope and reproduction
Presentation assets	Icon, backgrounds and selection audio
Contributing	Change, test and release requirements
Notices	Dependency, asset and license attribution

Credits

Built with the PS5 Payload SDK by John Törnblom (ps5-payload-dev). Third-party components, authors and licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

License

Copyright © 2026 BlackBearReloaded. Licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later; see LICENSE. Third-party components keep their own licenses. Binary releases are built from the tagged source in this repository.

Disclaimer

• No affiliation. This is an independent homebrew project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Sony Interactive Entertainment. "PlayStation", "PS5" and related marks are trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Simon Tatham.
• No proprietary material. No Sony SDK, firmware, encryption keys or decrypted system modules are included.
• No warranty. This project is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, to the extent permitted by law. See sections 15 and 16 of the GPL.
• Use at your own risk. Running homebrew requires a modified console, which may void its warranty, breach the platform's terms of service, or cause data loss.
• Legal use only. Use it only with hardware, accounts and content you own. This project does not support or enable piracy.

AI assistance

This project was developed with AI assistance from OpenAI and/or Anthropic tools.