A web-based word game. Evolve from a CELL to a WORM, from a FISH to a FROG, one letter at a time.
Needs a pretty modern browser. Tested mostly in Chrome and Safari, should work on recent Firefox too. Internet Explorer is unlikely to deal. It'd be fun to try on a mobile device.
The game didn't wind up at all where I wanted it, but I figure since I've come this far, I might as well go the distance... :-)
For build and develop, I used Ruby's MiddleMan gem. I wrote my code in CoffeeScript, and built some offline precalculation using Node.js.
At run-time, I'm using: d3.js, jQuery, Mustache
- Images are all photographs I took during the compo.
- Sounds are, naturally, bfxr/cfxr.
- No music this time.
- The HTML and CSS was the default boilerplate generated by the Middleman, but has since been completely replaced.
- POTENTIAL RULE-BEND: The word list was generated from the ispell English dictionary wordlist <http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/>;. A couple of IRC people said it should be fine to use a dictionary but a word list isn't explicitly covered by the exemptions like fonts and drum loops.
BRAVO, rjhunter. At the outset I was like "oh, it's broken. How can I connect hail and worm?"..and a few minutes later, it was so gratifying to get it! It's very cool and it makes us use brain-muscles that we use rarely use. Great job.
I have a huge interest in developing new gameplay mechanics using words. For a different jam, I did a very similar game but instead of linking the words by spelling-similarity, I used an MIT-supplied concept net and linked them via concept/meaning. You can try it at argumentchampion.com if you want.
Is it possible that the game would be in other languages?