The Eight Bit Passage

About the game

The year is 1699 and Spanish silver dollars, the "pieces of eight", sail north through a stretch of the Caribbean known as the Eight Bit Passage. Pirates lie in wait. You are the ship that keeps the passage clear.

The game looks at the sea from behind your ship and scrolls it toward you as you sail. You steer left and right between the lanes, and the ship shoots by itself, so what matters is where you stand. You can also jump, which is useful because the sea is full of things to leap over: waves, wrecks, blockades. Pirates and other enemies come at you in groups, they leave silver when they sink and the silver patches your hull up.

There are four stages, and each one ends with a boss: a big pirate boss, a flying balloon, a squad of small ships and a ghost ship. Each stage gives you a better cannon than the last, and the game remembers the stage you reached.

Playing it here

The first time you click Play the page downloads the Python runtime and the pygame library (about 23 MB), which takes a few seconds; 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.

Controls

Tips

Jump early. Hazards are easier to clear if you leave the water a moment before you reach them.

Pick up the silver. It is the only way to restore hit points, so steer over it when it is safe.

Know the boss's pattern. Each boss repeats the same attacks. Dodge them first and shoot when the coast is clear.

Frequently asked questions

Does it save my progress? Yes. The game remembers the stage you reached, in your browser. Clearing the site's data erases it.

Does it work on a phone? It needs a keyboard, so it is meant for a computer.

Why does the first start take a while? The page loads Python and the game libraries. Your browser keeps them, so the next visit starts much faster.

Is it free? Yes. The code and images are CC0/WTFPL, and the font and the music are under free licences.

Credits and licence

The Eight Bit Passage was made by Christopher Night (Universe Factory) for PyWeek 18 in 2014. The source code and images are by him and are licensed CC0/WTFPL, according to the README of the original entry. The sound effects are CC0 and were generated with SFXR. The font is Trade Winds from Google Fonts, Copyright 2011 Sideshow (a DBA of Font Diner, Inc), under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. The music is by Creative Sounds (creative-sound.org) under Creative Commons Attribution: "Electro Dance", "Eyes and More", "Set Up the Time Machine Back to the 90's" and "The Trip to the German Heaven". The version served here is ported from Python 2 to Python 3, its main loop is asynchronous (the browser needs it), the per-pixel noise effect on the images is switched off (the browser is too slow for it) and Q in the pause menu starts the game again instead of quitting; the changes and the original archive 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.