Stomper

About the game

Stomper is a one-button idea with a lot of room to grow. You are a small pixel character in a series of black-and-white rooms, and the way across each one runs over the heads of the little propeller robots that float in it. A stomp removes the robot, throws you back into the air, and gives you a chance to reach the next one before you touch the ground.

How high you bounce depends on how you stomp. Hold the jump key through the landing and the bounce is big; let go before you land and it is short and tight. That one choice is most of the game: some rooms need a high launch to reach a ledge, others a low, careful hop over a pit of spikes. Along the way the game adds robots that throw you extra high, robots that are not destroyed (you bounce off them and they stay), saws, and a dash that lets you change course in mid-air, and every new piece is introduced in a room built to teach it.

The game is quick to read and hard to put down. Each room fits on one screen and a fall just puts you back at the start of it, so you try again before you have had time to get annoyed. At the end a small summary shows your deaths, your time and how many of the 18 levels you finished.

It was made in one month for the GitHub Game Off 2022 jam (theme: "cliche") and finished 23rd overall and 6th in gameplay among 563 entries.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait for the page to load (about 8 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). Pick "Start Game" or choose a level from the level select screen. In this version all 18 levels are unlocked from the start, so you can jump straight to the ones that look interesting. Completed levels get a flag. The game needs a keyboard and a sound-friendly tab; there are no touch controls.

Controls

Tips

Learn the two bounces first. Hold Space while you land for the tall bounce, release it a moment before for the short one. Most rooms are built around that difference.

Chain, do not land. The ground only slows you down. Plan a path from enemy to enemy and you rarely need to touch it.

Use the dash to fix a bad bounce. In the rooms that give you a dash, change course in the air instead of trying to be perfect on the way up.

Look at what the enemies are doing. When a room looks impossible, the safe route is usually the one the robots open for you.

FAQ

Is it saved? No. Nothing is stored between visits; the levels you finish are remembered only while the tab is open.

Is it really free to share? Yes. The project is free software under the MIT licence, and the only outside file, the font, is under the SIL Open Font License. Both are listed below.

Does it work with a gamepad or on a phone? No. The game was made for a keyboard and has no other controls.

Credits and licence

Stomper was made by Diego Escalante for the GitHub Game Off 2022: code, pixel art (Aseprite), sound effects (Chiptone) and music (Audacity and a PO-20) by the author, under the MIT licence. The game runs on Godot Engine 3.5.3, also under the MIT licence.

• Font: "Stylish", Copyright 1992-2018 AsiaSoft Inc., SIL Open Font License 1.1. In this build the font is reduced to the characters the game uses.
• Music: the music file is compressed with the IMA-ADPCM option of the Godot importer to download faster; nothing else in the game was changed.

The licence texts, including the notices of the libraries inside the Godot engine, and the source of this build are linked from this page.