Spout

About the game

Spout is a small arcade game about climbing. You fly a tiny ship that can only turn and fire its thruster, and gravity pulls it down the whole time. The thruster does two jobs: it pushes the ship along, and it blows a stream of grit out of the back. Grey blocks fill the shaft above you, and every grain that hits a block wears it down a little, until the block is gone. Climbing in Spout means digging your way up with your own exhaust.

Touching a block, the walls on either side or the bottom of the screen ends the run. The grit itself is harmless, so you can fly through your own spray. The screen is drawn in four shades of grey, like an old handheld LCD, because that is where the game started: Kuni wrote it for a handheld console and then ported it to Windows. This is version 1.4, a simplified new version of that Windows code by Nick White.

Playing it here

This is Spout 1.4, compiled for the browser from its source code. The whole download is under 1 MB and there is nothing else to load. Your best score is kept in this browser; clearing this site's data deletes it. The game needs a keyboard.

Controls

The keypad works too: 4 and 6 rotate the ship.

How scoring works

The clock starts at 60 seconds. Every step you climb above the starting line is worth one point, and the counters at the bottom of the screen show the time, your height and your score. Each time you climb another 128 steps you pass a checkpoint: the seconds left on the clock are added to your score ten times over, and you get another 60 seconds, up to a maximum of 99. The run ends when the ship hits something or the clock reaches zero, and the title screen then shows your best score and height.

Tips

Thrust in short bursts. The ship keeps its speed, and holding the thruster for too long sends it flying into a wall. Tap it and let gravity do some of the work.

Aim the spray at what blocks you. The grit flies out of the back, opposite to the way the thruster pushes you. To wear down a block above or beside you, turn the ship so the spray points at it; that pushes you away from the block, so fire in short bursts and turn back to keep climbing.

Watch the sides. The walls at the edges of the shaft are solid. Drifting sideways while you look at the blocks above is the most common way to lose a run.

Keep moving up. The checkpoints are what keep the clock running, so a fast climb with a few close calls usually scores more than a careful one.