Climb by Gabriel Levi (glevi)

Climb is a rock climbing game. It is supposed to imitate the experience of going rock climbing on a climbing wall. It uses an image of a rock climbing wall from here

Goal

I wanted to simulate the experience of rock climbing using the keyboard. Holding onto rocks would be similated by holding a key down.

How to play

Nearby rocks have letters above them. Hold down the letter to grab onto that rock. Rocks to your left should have a letter from the left half of the keyboard, and rocks to your right should have a letter from the right half of the keyboard. Your left hand can only grab rocks on your left, and your right hand can only grab rocks on your right.

Pro tip: Your arms act like springs: to move try grabbing further away rocks!

Method

I found a good, front-on image of a climbing wall. I wrote a little program that saved the locations of all the rocks to a text file after I clicked on each rock. Then I wrote some code to zoom in on the wall and follow the player around on the wall.

I split the keyboard into two zones: left (1-5,q-t,a-g,z-b), and right (6-0,y-p,h-;,n-/). Nearby rocks are assigned letters based on where they are relative to the player. So rocks above and to the left are assigned letters from the top left zone.

Initially I started off having 4 zones and 4 hands, but I soon discovered that keyboards restrict certain combinations of 3 keys from being pressed simulataneously. Therefore I cut it down to 2 zones and 2 hands.

I added some rudimentary physics. The arms are springs, and exert stronger forces the more they are stretched. There is gravity which pulls the player down. Also, there is air resistance to dampen things.

Novelty

I have never seen a game like this. There is no point, but just like rock climbing, the players are compelled to go up and explore. The way of moving around in the game is pretty new and fun.

Results

This game does achieve my goal, though I wish I could have done it with 4 limbs. Artistically, this game could be improved quite a bit. However making a pretty character that can rock climb is pretty difficult. Also, assigning letters to rocks could be improved a bit...the edge cases are a bit iffy.

All in all, though, I'm happy. I made a fun game!