Active Sketch 03 - Words

Active Sketch 03 - Words by axcho on October 7, 2009

This is my third Active Sketch, a doodle in code. It's an attempt to turn a text into an interesting environment for a game.

I made this for a project with ~brontosaurus. If we can extract some fun out of this idea we will make a game based on it.



I used the Flixel engine to build this prototype. It's great for making pixelated games like this - I'd recommend it.

Click the window to start, then use the arrow keys to move around. You can pick up a word by pressing x or c.

x - grab word
c - grab word
left - move left
right - move right
up - jump up
down - drop down

On the right is your score, and on the left is your score multiplier and the current word you are holding. If you match two words exactly, your multiplier goes up. If you pick up two words that have no letters in common, your multiplier is halved. Otherwise, you get points for each letter the two words have in common, multiplied by your score multiplier.

There is no time limit, and words reappear after they go off the screen, so you can get as many points as you have patience for. It's not a game. It's just a test.

The story is something I wrote over a year ago, a retelling of Where the Wild Things Are with the themes of Ishmael, in the style of a Haida myth. It still has a sappy Western ending, though.

I've also posted the full, formatted text here, if you just want to read it: [link]

If you fall off the story, you can reload the page to start again.

Active Sketches by axcho