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Hammer Joe
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About the game
Hammer Joe is a one-screen arcade game in the tradition of the old single-room platformers. You are Joe, a small fellow with a very large hammer, standing on a set of ledges inside a brick-walled room. Spawners in the walls let creatures in, up to four at a time. They walk around the ledges, and touching one that is not hurt costs you a life.
Joe runs left and right, jumps from ledge to ledge and swings the hammer in front of him. A hit does not kill a creature: it stuns it. A stunned creature can be hit again, and then it is sent flying around the room. Flying creatures bounce off the walls and knock other creatures down on the way, so a good swing at the right moment can clear a crowd, and a creature that has been bounced around for a few seconds is finished off for 50 points. You have three lives, shown at the bottom of the screen together with a timer and your score. When the lives are gone the game shows your final score, which adds ten points for every second you survived, so staying alive counts as much as fighting.
Two kinds of creature are in the room, a small walker and a ghost-like one, and the whole game is learning how they move and when to jump to a ledge instead of standing your ground.
Playing it here
Hammer Joe was made for WASM-4, a fantasy console: an imaginary handheld with a 160 by 160 screen, four colours, a D-pad and two buttons, for which independent developers write new games. MFauzan26 made it for the first WASM-4 game jam, in January 2022. It runs here in the official WASM-4 web runtime and is about 63 KB. It does not save anything.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Left and right arrows | run |
| Z (button 2) | jump |
| X (button 1) | swing the hammer; start or restart |
| Enter | WASM-4 menu (pause, reset) |
On a phone or tablet, the WASM-4 runtime shows touch buttons on the screen.
Tips
Swing early. The hammer has a short reach in front of Joe, and a creature that is already touching you gets there first.
Stun, then launch. One hit stuns, a second hit sends the creature flying. Launching it into others is worth the wait.
Stay alive. Every second adds ten points at the end, which is more than one or two creatures.
FAQ
Is there a way to pause? Yes: Enter opens the WASM-4 menu, which pauses the game.
Is it for two players? No, Hammer Joe is a one-player game.
Credits and licence
Hammer Joe was made by MFauzan26, who wrote the code and drew the graphics. It is released under the MIT licence. The cartridge is the one the author published in his repository, without changes, and it runs in the official WASM-4 runtime (ISC licence). The licence texts are linked from this page.