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Ladders & Dragons
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About the game
Ladders & Dragons turns the usual platformer upside down: you never control the hero directly. A little soldier runs forward on his own, turns round when he hits a wall and walks into whatever lies ahead, water included. Your job is to build his path. You move a target around the screen and put up ladders against the walls, and when the soldier runs into a ladder leaning his way, he climbs it.
The catch is the wood. You only have six ladder pieces, shown at the top left, and a tall ladder uses several of them, so on most screens you have to take ladders down behind the soldier and put them up again further ahead while he keeps running. Later levels add keys that open doors, levers and switches that open gates, teleporters, and orcs with swords or bows. A sword picked up on the way lets the soldier defeat one orc, and a shield lets him push them back. In the final level a dragon waits, and it takes both a sword and a shield to face it. Reach the flag to clear each of the 13 levels.
Playing it here
Ladders & Dragons was made for TIC-80, a fantasy console: an imaginary 1980s-style computer with a 240 by 136 screen and 16 colours, for which independent developers write new games. Pata____ first made it for a Gamecodeur community game jam held in memory of David Mekersa, the founder of that French game development school, and later expanded it. It runs here in the official TIC-80 web player. Click Play and press Z on the title screen.
The game does not save, and after the last level it goes back to the title screen. Esc opens the TIC-80 menu. A gamepad works directly, and on touch screens an on-screen D-pad and buttons appear.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | move the target (hold to keep moving) |
| Z or W (A button) | put up a ladder at the target; take down the ladder whose top is at the target |
| X (B button) | take down the first ladder you placed |
| Z, W or X (title screen) | start |
| Esc | TIC-80 menu |
A few things worth knowing
Wait for the green target. A ladder can only hang from an empty square right next to a wall, with free space above it. The target turns green when the spot is valid and stays red when it is not.
Ladders are handled by the top. A ladder hangs down from the square you picked to the floor below. To take one down with Z, point the target at its top square again; X removes the oldest ladder wherever it is, which is handy for recycling the pieces left behind the soldier.
Every sword is good for one blow. A sword is used up as soon as it strikes, while a shield only pushes an orc back. The dragon has three hearts, and each blow needs the soldier to arrive with a sword and a shield, so the last level is about collecting the swords scattered around it in the right order.
Credits and licence
Ladders & Dragons was created by Pata____, who made the code, the graphics, the sounds and the music. It is free software under the MIT licence, chosen by the author in the header of the cartridge published on tic80.com. It runs here in the TIC-80 web player (MIT licence). The licence text is linked from this page.