Portugues
Dodgeball
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About the game
Dodgeball is a very small arcade game made by Sander in 't Veld, who has said he built it in a single day to try out the WASM-4 console. The setup is as simple as it gets: one little player on a square court, and balls coming in from the edges. Your only job is to not get hit.
Each ball shows up with a short warning mark at the edge of the court, so you can see where it is about to enter and from which side. At first they are slow and far between. As the seconds go by they arrive more often, and later they also move faster, until the court is crowded and every step has to count. A round ends the moment a ball touches you, and the game shows two numbers: how long you survived and how many balls have gone by.
It is a game for beating your own record. Rounds are short, restarting takes one key press, and the screen is limited to four colours of a soda-can palette, which suits the cartoonish little runner.
Playing it here
This is the cartridge built from the author's source code, running in the official WASM-4 web runtime. It is about 23 KB and starts instantly. It is a one-player game, and it does not save anything.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | run left, right, up or down (one direction at a time) |
| X or Space (button 1) | start the game, and restart after a loss |
| Z (button 2), held | the walls stop being deadly (a handy way to practise) |
| Enter | WASM-4 menu (pause, reset) |
On a phone or tablet, the WASM-4 runtime shows touch buttons on the screen.
Tips
Stay near the middle. The edges are where balls come in, and the walls of the court are deadly too. In the centre you have room to go either way.
Watch the warnings. Every ball is announced a moment before it appears. Decide where you are going as soon as the mark shows up, not when the ball is already on you.
Only one direction at a time. The runner moves along one axis at once, so a diagonal escape does not exist. Plan a step ahead, especially against fast balls.
Practise with Z. Holding Z lets you touch the walls without dying, which is useful to get a feeling for how the balls move. Points and time still count, so keep it for practice.
FAQ
Is there a two-player mode? No, Dodgeball is a one-player game.
Does the game get harder? Yes. Balls arrive more and more often, and after about a minute the fast ones start to show up.