(It was about time I posted this.)

Perhaps you remember a Ludum Dare entry I called Climbrunner—well, this game is an evolution of that idea. Here, you run around a tricky series of screens, up the walls and ceilings, only with the ability to jump to avoid the obstacles that get in your way. There’s no dying, just lots of cursing over missed jumps and having to do it all over again. It’s a short game, but if you think it was fun once you first finish it, there’s still a second path you can try.

All you need to know to play it is that you jump with the spacebar.

Play Runnerby (Flash)

It’s a single player game, but is intended (not to a very interesting result) to be played together with other people, passing the controller around. This is why the level design has lots of ‘sticky’ places: parts that keep you in a loop until you decide to jump out, so you can safely hand over the controls. It is also how I rationalized the frustration aspect, reminding of a time in which, as a kid, I played video games with friends or my cousins, and we would take turns playing/wincing at the ‘obvious’ mistakes the others were making as they played.

I didn’t really take it where I wanted it to go, as my ambition clashed with my lazy attitude about creating the content. I submitted it to Gamma IV (despite it not fitting into the 5-minutes-per-session rule) with no positive result, and then tried Indiecade just because I really wanted it to find its way to a large event, again to no success. What it was supposed to be was a much larger world, with each screen offering challenges to reach each of the exits (at least two per screen). The reward for the challenges would not be a destination (a goal), but exploration itself: discovering what lies further into the game world. Since this was intended for an event with a massive attendance, I wanted the world to feel different depending on your whereabouts; then, whenever you glanced at the screen where the game was being played continuously for the duration of the event, you’d see someplace new. The actual finished game is really just an imperfect compromise, an abortion of these ambitions, so I’m not surprised it didn’t do well.

Credits

• Uses Adam Saltsman’s Flixel.
• Sounds by ltibbits, RealRhodesSounds, and teleport8.
• Some implemented ideas as suggested by Noyb.
• Testers: Sigal, Javi, Javy, Ilan, Mariposa, Stephen Lavelle, Terry Cavanagh, Bennett Foddy, Zaphos, Greg Wohlwend, Jasper Byrne.
• Texts quoted from Miss Mulock’s Tom Thumb.