Shockwave games by Dr. K---
Click here to play 9 x 9
9 x 9 is an original puzzle game. File size: 87k.
How to play 9 x 9?
4-Dimensional aliens have invaded our universe and enslaved the human race!
The aliens love to torment humans by placing them in elaborate mazes. The mazes are made of grids located in parallel dimensions, and all grids must be solved simultaneously.
To play 9x9, guide the human through the maze to the "exit".
Controls:
| up: | i, up arrow |
| left: | j, left arrow |
| right: | l, right arrow |
| down: | k, down arrow |
About 9 x 9
Friday, November 10, 2000:
I've been programming in a variety of languages (most of them object-oriented) for a couple of years now. Most recently I was a full-time web developer for a small internet company. Whenever I talk with people about what I do, if I mention that I've done quite a bit of work with Shockwave they inevitably ask me:
"So can you program Shockwave games?"
The answer is, "Yes, I can." Unfortunately I don't have any public examples of the work I've done (private intranet stuff), nor have I ever specifically programmed a game in Shockwave. And so I have decided the time has come to put up or shut up.
I started working on 9 x 9 on Friday, November 3rd. I've been working on it for a week. The core game engine was finished in about three days, the rest of the time I've been creating levels and writing misc glue code.
So far I have designed 29 levels out of a planned 81 (9 sets of 9). It takes about 20 minutes to design and test a fairly simple level. The levels are hand coded; I'll probably write some kind of test editing tool before I've finished all 81 levels. Levels can contain up to 9 mazes, and the final level set will contain nine levels each with 9 mazes.
This is the plan for the first four sets:
- Tutorial 1: blocks and pits
- Tutorial 2: glass blocks
- Puzzle Set 1
- Tutorial 3: phase blocks and phase pits
For those of you who are actually reading through this, the code that will let you access any of the first 27 levels is "fgh". You should be able to get through the first, say, 9 or so levels without any real problem. Levels with phase blocks and pits can be much more difficult.
Some of the graphic elements, like all the buttons, were made with Flash 5.
The font used is Onuava, a monospace font created by Scriptorium.
Things to Do
I have a couple things on my list for this game, so if you want to send me feedback check through this list and vote for what you want to see:
- build about 50 more levels.
- add some sound cues when you run into a block/fall into a pit
- create an intro/outro for each level
- add a timer/retry counter to "keep score"
- add some tracking code so I can figure out which levels are more difficult/popular
send comments/feedback to shoehorn@antimodal.com