Portugues
Dark Physics
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About the game
Prof. Knight is a physicist who studies dark matter, and his day is about to go off the rails. Strange events unfold around the university campus: a lecture hall, a prank, a snatched gun, a scuffle over it, locked doors and a way out. The game is a short point-and-click adventure drawn by hand in a loose, funny style and read aloud, with voices recorded by the author.
You play it entirely with the mouse. Between story slides you walk through rooms by clicking on doors, pick up the items you find (a key opens a locked door) and, once you hold a gun, shoot the strange dark shapes and targets that appear in the room. The author notes in the credits that no AI was used to make it.
Playing it here
The first time you click Play the page downloads the Python runtime and the pygame library (about 23 MB) and then the game itself, which is about 11 MB, mostly voice recordings. After that a "click to start" message appears, and one more click starts the game with sound. The download is kept by your browser, so every other pygame game on the site opens faster. Nothing is loaded from other sites. The game has no save.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Mouse | point at things; the pointer changes over doors and items |
| Left click on a door | go through it (a locked door needs the key) |
| Left click on an item | pick it up |
| Left click elsewhere | shoot, once you have the gun |
| Space | pause |
Tips
Listen. The story is told by voice, and each slide moves on by itself when the voice ends.
Watch the pointer. It changes shape over a door and over something you can pick up, and a label tells you which.
Frequently asked questions
Does it save my progress? No. A run starts from the beginning.
Does it work on a phone? It is played with a mouse, so it is meant for a computer.
Why does the first start take a while? The page loads Python and the game libraries, and the voices are large. Your browser keeps them, so the next visit starts much faster.
Is it free? Yes. The game's code, art and voices are dedicated to the public domain (CC0).
Credits and licence
Dark Physics was made by mit-mit for PyWeek 36 in 2023, on the theme "Dark Matter": game design, programming, artwork and voice. The code, artwork and voice recordings are CC0. Music: "Theremin" by rap2h and "Escape Velocity" by Scott Buckley are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Sounds, all CC0 from freesound.org: "Crowd in Panic" by IENBA, "Girl Screaming" by tomattka, "Crowd Laughing" by deleted_user_2104797, "Crowd Laugh" by sagetyrtle and "Applause" by sandermotions. The version served here changes only the main loop (the browser needs it to be asynchronous) and the Esc key on the title screen (it does nothing in a web page); the change and the original zip are linked from the Licenses page. The game runs on pygame-ce (LGPL-2.1) and CPython, whose licences and source are also linked from the Licenses page.