ASCIIvania (gharding3)

Posted by on July 27, 2012


A mini metroidvania type word game. – [Author’s Description]

(via indiegames.com)

[Play Online (Flash)]

Games, Highly Recommended

16 Comments.

  1. Buttons July 27, 2012 at 8:29 pm

    Love it. Creative puzzles with multiple solutions, and a Metroidvania that didn’t feel like a series of keys for a series of doors (even though in some sense that’s exactly what it was). The touch with the name in the beginning is cute, too. Stupid J name sure isn’t giving me any gameplay advantages, though.

    Kind of a strange dictionary they’re using. Lots of two-letter Scrabble words aren’t accepted, but MS is?

  2. David T. Marchand July 27, 2012 at 9:30 pm

    Too much fucking fun here! Really funny too.

    I’m still wondering about some rules though. Never really got what’s the difference between white and grey letters, or how does the game decide if you can complete a word in mid-air or not.

    But generally lots of fun, and a nice apology at the end. I’m not an expert with English though, so from time to time I had to frantically hit all keys to get it right.

    • nobody July 27, 2012 at 9:53 pm

      My understanding was:

      1. Words formed with gray letters reset when exiting/reentering the screen. White letters disappear permanently after a single use.

      2. Mid-air completions are never allowed, though what counts as mid-air is gravity-direction dependent.

  3. nobody July 27, 2012 at 9:51 pm

    It’s interesting that it lets you pick your starting letter. Going with a vowel or S will lead to a slightly easier/smoother game (though there are a handful of gates that require a specific letter, so it might not have all that much effect overall).

    • Noyb July 27, 2012 at 11:04 pm

      You still need to collect all letters, so it more determines how constrained you are at the start. A few letters can lead you to a no win state if you can fall past a certain gate without having first picked up the jump powerup.

      • Aquin July 27, 2012 at 11:41 pm

        Yeah this happened to me the first time actually. I’m not sure how I feel about possible no-win states in these kinds of games. If it was more roguelike I’d probably think it was genius or something. 😳

  4. Aquin July 27, 2012 at 10:20 pm

    Oh I see I need to fix something. This game was amazing.

  5. Channing July 28, 2012 at 5:29 am

    I love how a single letter has the ability to act as a one-way door (namely the X in the RAIN/LEAK room). AX is a word, but XA isn’t. Clever as shit.

    That said, yeah this dictionary is wtf. Not sure why it recognizes MHO as a word but it does make that room a lot easier.

  6. Justin July 28, 2012 at 6:53 am

    Gosh…that was really good!

  7. NNPS July 28, 2012 at 7:04 am

    I shall name my child Sho so that when s/he plays this game it will be much easier for him/her.

  8. Buttons July 28, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    Oh, that’s interesting. The name you choose gets added to the dictionary for that game (so that you can open that first passage), but that also means it can allow weird sequence breaks too. For example, if your name is “DUSELESS”, you can go to the right, spell DWELL, then DUSELESS, then DB (a word, apparently), and then get the J. Of course, then you’re stuck (because you can’t jump yet), but it’s a cool feature. It makes the question of what name is best for a “speed run” much more interesting.

  9. Porpentine July 28, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    i love this sort of game

  10. undi July 28, 2012 at 4:16 pm

    Play with FNOWN