Dodge-'em games
Get across, or get up, without getting hit: toads crossing a road on a rainy night, and a climber on a twelve-floor building.
All of these games are playable now and still becoming teaching tools. The gameplay came first, on purpose; the teaching is being added one game at a time. Each card says what the game has so far and what we are considering.
Hop Count
A rainy spring night, and a toad has to get back to the pond it was born in, across a road and a creek. A retro single-screen hopping game for an NES-style controller.
In it now
- Field notes explain why toads cross roads on rainy spring nights: to return to the pond where they were born, helped along by volunteers with buckets.
Ideas we are considering
- The hop counter as a math hook.
- Finding the fewest hops for a crossing.
How to play
You're a toad. Get from the wood at the bottom to the pond at the top: over five lanes of road, across the grass verge, over five lanes of creek, and into one of the five bays in the reeds. Fill all five bays and the night moves on to the next level, a little busier than the last.
- The road. Cars, a slow tractor, a fast motorbike and a long lorry. Read the lanes and pick your moment. A volunteer with a torch and a bucket walks the nearest lane now and then. Hop into her bucket and she carries you across to the verge, for a bonus.
- The verge. Sometimes a grass snake slithers along it. Puff up (hold B) and it gives up on you.
- The creek. Ride the logs and the turtles. Some turtles dive: they go dark just before they do. Fall in and you aren't lost straight away: the current sweeps you along, and you can only climb out onto something (a log, a turtle, the bank or a bay). If it carries you off the edge of the screen, that toad is lost. Riding a log off the edge loses it too.
- The pond. A heron sometimes stands in a bay. Don't hop in: puff up from the creek just below and it flies off, or wait for it to leave. A mayfly in a bay is worth bonus points.
- A lone male toad sometimes sits on a log or the verge. Hop onto him and he rides on your back to the pond, for a bonus.
Each toad has a time bar. You have four toads, and an extra one at 10,000 points.
| Button | Keyboard | Does |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrows / WASD | Hop one tile. Hold to keep hopping, slowly. |
| A | Z, K or Space | Long hop: two rows forward in one jump, over whatever is between. Then it needs a few seconds to recharge (LEAP, at the bottom). |
| B | X or J | Hold to puff up. You can't move while puffed, but snakes and herons give up on you. Short, and it needs to recharge (PUFF). |
| Select | Shift | Field notes about toad migration. A turns the sound on or off. |
| Start | Enter (or P) | Start / pause. |
A standard USB gamepad works too, including cheap pads that report the D-pad as an analog stick.
The first time you plug in a pad the browser doesn't recognise (most cheap USB pads), the game asks you to press A, B, Select and Start, and remembers the answer for every game on the site. Add ?padsetup to the address to ask again.
Browsers start sound only after a key press or click (a gamepad button may not count), so press any key once if it is silent.
Points: 10 for each new row you reach, 50 for getting home plus 10 for every second left on the clock, 200 each for a bucket ride, a mayfly and bringing a male home, and 1,000 for clearing a level. The hop count at the top is how many hops you've taken this level.
Twelve Stories
A cat is stranded on the roof of a twelve-storey building, and every floor has a tenant who throws things. A retro climbing game for an NES-style controller.
In it now
Nothing yet. It is a game for now.
Ideas we are considering
- The shutters open and close on a cycle: find the pattern and predict the safe moment.
- A short story for each floor's tenant.
How to play
Climb the front of the building, window by window, to the cat on the roof. Each floor is its own story: a bakery, a florist, a laundry, a library, a pigeon roost, a music teacher, a painter, a toy shop, a clockmaker, a gym, a pizzeria and a beekeeper. Each tenant has a look in the window and something to throw: rolling pins, flowerpots, wet sheets, books, pigeons, metronomes, paint cans, bouncing balls, rolling gears, dumbbells, pizza dough and bees. The bottom of the screen shows the floor you're on and what's coming.
Shutters. Open windows are your footholds: you can only climb onto an open sill. Some windows have shutters that open and close slowly on a rhythm, and more of them do the higher you go. Just before they close, they turn orange and swing on their hinges. If they slam shut while you're on that sill, you're knocked down to the first open sill below. Boarded-up windows never open: hop over them.
Tenants. A tenant leans out of an open window above you and holds something up for a moment before letting go. That moment is your warning. Move out of the way, or hold B to flatten yourself against the wall so it misses. You can only hold your breath for so long (the B bar at the top), and a gear rolling along your ledge will still run you over.
Day and night. Press Select whenever you like and dusk or dawn falls over a second and a half.
- By day you can see the whole building, every tenant and every shutter. Any open window can throw something.
- By night the building goes dark. You see only what's near you, plus the lit windows. Only lit windows throw things, so the dark ones are safe, but you can barely see where you're going. Falling things glint in the dark, and you can hear them coming. Bats come out at night.
Reach the roof for a bonus, an extra life and a bonus for the time left. Then the next building begins, with faster shutters and busier tenants. You have three lives, and a clock: if it runs out, you lose a life.
| Button | Keyboard | Does |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrows / WASD | Up and down climb window to window. Left and right shuffle along the ledge. |
| A | Z, K or Space | Hop over the window above to the one above that. With Left or Right: leap sideways, across a broken ledge. |
| B | X or J | Hold to flatten against the wall. You can't move, but falling things and bats miss you. |
| Select | Shift | Day or night. |
| Start | Enter (or P) | Start / pause. On the pause screen, A turns sound on or off. |
A standard USB gamepad works too, including cheap pads that report the D-pad as an analog stick.
Browsers start sound only after a key press or click (a gamepad button may not count), so press any key once if it is silent.
Points: for every window climbed, more on higher floors; a bonus for each new floor; a roof bonus plus ten points for every second left on the clock. The high score is kept in this browser.