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Show HN: A game my 12-year-old daughter wrote
- ogdoad 9y ago"You can only solve it by doing the crime yourself." They would call this "warning signs" after the fact.
- R4FKEN 9y agotoo difficult for me...
- david927 9y agoFrom her: Agreed -- I made it a little too hard but did you see the button at the beginning that shows how to get hints? (Also, you can get out of the first room through the drain.) Thanks for the feedback!
- sharemywin 9y agopretty good for a 12 yr old.
- david927 9y agoThanks. I helped her with the coding -- she's still learning Javascript -- but that was the only help she got. She really worked hard on it for about a year.
- tux1968 9y agoThat's really impressive, she should be proud of what she's done. As for me, i'm not too proud of how far I got... couldn't figure out which painting had a plant behind it or what to do next.
- david927 9y agofrom Sophie: Check on the painting in the hallway. :)
- QuasiAlon 9y agoIMHO for a 12 y/o to stick to a goal and work on something for a year, without losing interest or moving to a new shiny object, is no less remarkable than actually producing a game. Well done.
- mapster 9y agois it all in javascript? neat that this peaked an artist's interest in coding.
- david927 9y agoYeah, it's all Javascript. She's an artist but she's quite good at math and wants to combine them for her career into a form of digital art.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoFirst off, this is wonderful. I have a 2 year old daughter. A little too young to be coding but I look forward to seeing if she gets into it. The art is pretty great too. My only feedback, it really needs UI states. Like when you hover over a button or an item in the room that an action can be taken on. Otherwise it is too hard to figure out what is clickable and what is not and it becomes a random clicking game. I still do not know how I got out of the first room except through random clicking. Edit: ahhh... it's a vent.
- darepublic 9y agoGood work! It would be nice when you mouse over clickable items that their outlines glow or something :)
- merpnderp 9y agoAll I can do is click on most of the doors, pick up the nails, and click on the hint. Nothing else seems to be interactive. Anyone have a hint on anything else that should be clickable? EDIT: Figured it out. What a brilliantly designed game....course now I'll have nightmares. That final screen....Well played.
- singularity2001 9y agoFigured it out. I feel so dumb. there's nothing I can do in this game. so frustrating. HELP!
- david927 9y agoRead through the comments here, a lot of the trickiest parts are explained. If you still need help, ask on her Twitter feed.
- tejohnso 9y agoSeems very macabre for a 12 year old mind. There's a consistent, creepy mood throughout all the screens that I saw, and I think it's very well done. The quality of the artwork / art direction is impressive. In terms of playability, I managed to pick up nails, and I tried to use them on all five characters I could find but nothing seemed to work.
- kevinwang 9y agoI'm stuck after I killed Simon :(
- david927 9y agoCheck the hints. (Bella is knitting..)
- dingo_bat 9y agoThere are some bugs in that part. I saw the knitting hint and clicked on bella's knitting pin. But it didn't appear in the inventory for a loooong time. After about 5 minutes of exploring all the rooms, it showed up.
- sudouser 9y agowebsitesseems to be suffering hacker news hug of death
- cdevs 9y agoIs her journey more for the code or the ability to create games? The artwork is pretty cool I some how assumed you took part in the art. I remember being a good doodler but lost my attention in putting to much effort into a detailed sketch. I loved games and coding but at a young age probably would have taken some of the short cuts available today. It's cool either way hope when I have a kid they are open to tech and creating something.
- david927 9y agoShe only got help coding -- that's all her art. She's been working on it a while.
- pbalau 9y agoI think there is a bug in the bathroom, the bucket won't show up (but if you click around you'll get it in the inventory). Very impressive from a 12 years old.
- aetherspawn 9y agoDoesn’t fit on portrait iPhone 6 screen I expected it wouldn’t be perfect and I’d have to wrangle left and right, but about an inch is missing off the left of the page even when you scroll.
- la_oveja 9y agothis is the most underground game I've seen in years, and you expect to work flawlessly on your iPhone 6. some people need to remember the Macromedia Flash era...
- james-skemp 9y agoSamsung Galaxy S7 has the same issue. Will probably try it out on my computer later though.
- david927 9y agoEveryone: thank you for trying it. She's on Cloud Nine right now!
- briandear 9y agoIf she can impress the cynical folks at HN -- she deserves to be on Cloud Nine! Congrats to her!
- sudouser 9y agofirst of all congratulations and as someone already said it doesn't fit in the iPhone, also the click area of items is too small, finally the tutorial could have a previous button
- itronitron 9y agoLooks interesting but all I get is a static picture, the only thing that is interactive is the hint thingy, I am using Chrome.
- david927 9y agoClick on the drain to go to the dining room. Then look for nails...
- itronitron 9y agothanks
- 8x8squares 9y agoExcellent game. Very well done! Small suggestion: If items were intentionally made not to look like clickable, it's fine. Otherwise, a simple 'cursor: pointer' on doors and items would be better in my opinion. Nevertheless, it's a wonderful piece of art. Your daughter has a promising future.
- david927 9y agoThank you so much. That means a lot to her. She says the items were intentionally made not to look clickable to make the game more challenging.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y agoMost of the clickable items do look clickable to me, except for the cupboard bucket. Also wtf is happening when you use the bucket? It transforms?
- david927 9y agoClearly, if you water a plant it grows into a pumpkin, which is a jack o'lantern, which then turns into ... a record
- djsumdog 9y agoDid she just do the artwork or did you teach her to code it as well?
- code_duck 9y agoHas she played any of the classic LucasFilm SCUMM based games? Or their predecessors, the text-based Infocom games like Zork?
- jimnotgym 9y agoStart with 'The Secret of Monkey Island'. £2.37 on Steam [0]. I spent hours on my Atari ST wondering how to get past the governor's dogs. With no WWW to look for cheats I ended up asking at my local independent computer shop (remember those), and one of the guys told me how to do it. [0]http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island_Special_Edition/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_Secret_of_Monkey...
- sudouser 9y agodrawing smells MKUltra
- yorwba 9y agoI think it might be necessary to preload the game resources, otherwise the game becomes unplayable on a slow connection with a round-trip > 500 ms (and I guess the server is under heavy load right now). Well, not exactly unplayable, I ended up just looking at the filenames in the requests that were sent to get a feeling for what was happening. Well done! EDIT: I noticed that there are 'pills' in the list of items, but none of the rooms has them. Should have taken your pills, Nathan!
- david927 9y agoI noticed that there are 'pills' in the list of items, but none of the rooms has them. Should have taken your pills, Nathan! She said this was her favorite comment. It had her on the floor laughing!
- BugsJustFindMe 9y agoHey OP, how did you feel when your 12 year old said she wanted to make a game that starts with the phrase "Aaron deserves to die"? Some people would be concerned, but clearly you've been very supportive of the endeavor.
- david927 9y agoYes, I agree, it's a dark game. Luckily, my mother is a psychologist and helped clarify to me what it's all about for my daughter, and why I shouldn't be concerned. Also her art style is already changing again and the next game will be something completely different.
- djsumdog 9y agoSome of the best game developers have really dark minds. Look at the artwork fro the original Warcraft or the Doom guys.
- eps 9y agoYou don't say - https://youtube.com/watch?v=by24CkOxXQ4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=by24CkOxXQ4
- dkersten 9y agoOr one of my personal favourites: The Binding of Isaac
- Fnoord 9y agoAh, good ol' Chris Metzen. Got bullied as a teenager. Made tons of artwork for Warcraft, Diablo, and other Blizzard franchises. Now he got a burn-out. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Metzen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Metzen
- acafourek 9y agoThis might be the first time anyone has ever said “Luckily my mother is a psychologist...”
- 9y ago
- scrollaway 9y agoYour daughter's awesome! She's going places. But you already knew that :) And you're awesome too for encouraging her by sharing her work and helping her with it. I don't have feedback on the game so I'll just recommend a book which I think is readable for a 12 year old (I'd also recommend it to anyone here): "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" (https://www.theoryoffun.com https://www.theoryoffun.com). It's a great introduction to game design and it's full of fun cartoons.
- alanfalcon 9y agoIt’s a good book for adults, too!
- zachlatta 9y agoGod, I am in love with this. Your daughter is amazing. 12 years old or not, this was the highlight of my evening.
- david927 9y agoCool! Thanks!
- westmeal 9y agoDoes she like Tim Burton? Jokes aside, I'm really digging this sketchy art style.
- alpb 9y agoReminded me of Crimson Room & Viridian Room from back in the Flash Player days. http://escaperoom.net/page-top100.html http://escaperoom.net/page-top100.html
- z3t4 9y agoNice data structure. No classes, just objects. Which makes it faster to iterate. Feedback: Throw in a bunch of throw's for sanity checks like if(!room) throw new Error("room=" + room + " window.location.hash=" + window.location.hash); It will help keep your sanity. And you will get rid of an if(room) which will flatten the code, and less code paths are also good for sanity. Smart using the url hash to store state btw. And use colors! Start with fill colors, then progress into using colors for everything. Dad: Get her a digital painting board.
- ballenf 9y agoI took the b&w as an intentional artistic choice, especially given the color use in the final(?) scene ("unlocked room").
- david927 9y agoIt is intentional. That was something that impressed me about it -- exactly how intentional everything is. Also, she has a digital art board but scanned drawings on paper because she wanted a rougher, more sketchy look to it.
- dingdingdang 9y agoGreat art & concept. Tech feedback wise: I'm getting an odd ~2 second delay whenever I click something which is making it bit difficult since it's a point and click adventure - might simply be the server that's mildly overloaded; you could put it behind cloudflare?
- cpfohl 9y agoAnyone have a friendly hint of how I can off my dear brother? I can't find any plants to water...And what kind of plant survives behind a painting w/out light!?
- la_oveja 9y agoI played the game twice, but couldn't fully understand the story. Any hints?
- muzani 9y agoI thought 12 was a really young age to start making games, but then I realized I made games like this too at 12. Both code and art. A lot of my game making friends from that group became millionaire game developers by 30. I didn't really accomplish much besides cutting my teeth doing project management, debugging, learning the horrors of waterfall. I would love to see the new generation continue this.
- kalleboo 9y agoYeah it reminds me a lot of the HyperCard games me and my friends would make as kids. What tools are kids using these days to make point-and-click style games like this?
- twic 9y agoIt has a very strong HyperCard vibe? Has its creator used HyperCard? If not, has she played a similar kind of game? It would be super interesting if this was a parallel reinvention.
- david927 9y agoNo, she's never seen HyperCard but I think she's played a similar game in terms of game-play before. I'll have to ask.
- dan_mctree 9y agoCool little game! Loving the art and the morbid story. It was tough as nails One nitpick: sometimes the game would seem to get unresponsive if I clicked the little hint door (it'd get stuck halfway open). Only spamclicking around for a while got me out of it
- jugg1es 9y agoReally loving the art style. I'm also impressed with the code quality. Way above what I would expect a 12 year old would be capable of. I've seen college students that would struggle with something like this. Keep it up, kid!
- nojvek 9y agoDid she draw everything by herself? That is amazing. I wish I could draw like that. On second day of 2018, I’m already jealous of a 12 year old accomplishing more than me :(
- phatbyte 9y agoAwesome art style, but I wish the toolbox had labels, after I watered the plant, it transformed into a pumpkin and gave an unknown item. No idea what to do with that :X
- david927 9y agoIt's record. There's a phonograph to play it somewhere in the house
- kakarot 9y agoIt won't load for me on Firefox, linux, disabled ad blockers. Works on Chrome. edit: Well I guess not. I can't click on anything but the hint cabinet. Clicking on the bottom left corner of the moved me to a new room once, but I could not reproduce it.
- air7 9y agoThis is really impressive for any novice game developer with no regards for their age. Some feedback after playing for a few minutes: It seems the game mechanics only allows the "critical path" of advancing. By that I mean the only actions that generate a reaction are the ones that advance the plot (with the exception of moving between rooms and hints). This also causes some frustration as I basically just try to click on everything and mostly nothing happens and I ask myself if I'm doing something wrong. I would suggest adding a click-to-describe layer. So for example clicking on a character would say something about him/her (Maybe objectively, maybe subjectively from the player's pov), clicking on an item, even one that I don't need to interact with, says something about it. etc. This is very common in adventure games and is a great way to add lay down the story element for the game while at the same time provide the player with some interaction while looking for the actual solution to the current step. But again, really really great.
- sireat 9y agoWas going to say, great art, but is there only one object to pick up and use? I spent 5 minutes navigating rooms and mindlessly clicking and nothing happening until picking up one object and finally using it to solve the riddle. Any red herrings?
- david927 9y agoYou need to eventually get through the locked door. The first object is nails, then you need to use the bucket which is in a cabinet in the bathroom and click on the painting. She made it really tough, for some reason.
- kernelbandwidth 9y agoAs an adventure game lover, I think this is a great little game! I love dark, macabre adventure games and I'm really digging the art style here. The mood is very consistent and the creepiness really comes across. Your daughter has done a great job!
- ai_ja_nai 9y agoNice adventure, but I got mad at "1-item-at-time" picking rule. I'd rather prefer all of them being collectable, instead of putting an ordering that forces you resorting every time to the Uncle. Very nice, though. Keep it up!
- sumpygump 9y agoThis was very cool. Thanks for sharing!
- chatmasta 9y agoVery cool. I finally beat the game, although I did need to look at the source code. The most confusing thing to me was that you need to find the items in order. I kept clicking on the knife wondering why it wasn't going into my inventory. Also found a few cheats :P (#locked_room). Seriously though this is really impressive and I love the art work... it really felt like I was in those classic red room games from a decade+ (!!!) ago
- davidcamel 9y agoI spent about 15 minutes just having fun with the mood, theme, artwork, and "feel" of the game. I had intended to spend two minutes tops. This is an engrossing and genuinely wonderful game :-).
- david927 9y agoThanks!
- emmacastor 9y agoThis was such a cool little game! I agree with the comment that assets should be preloaded. For some reason the only item image that ever showed up in my inventory was the nails. I spent a really long time looking for the bucket only to realize that I had it already and could use it on the plant. None of the other items after that appeared in my inventory, but I just trusted they were there and was able to proceed through the rest of the game. I had to look at the source code for help, but I was super impressed by the clarity of the code there too. Nicely done!