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VimMonsters Academy
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
VimMonsters Academy is a small role-playing game in the style of the old creature-catching adventures, with one twist: you do
everything with the keys of the Vim text editor. You start in a house where the only thing you can do is walk, and the only way to
walk is h, j, k and l, left, down, up and right. Each new area teaches a few more motions and gives you a reason to use them.
The seven areas go from the home row to the editor's heavier tools. Word Meadow brings w, b and e, Line Ridge the jumps to
the start and end of a line, Count Grove counted motions such as 3w, Finder Fen the character searches f and t, Operator Studio
deleting and changing words, and Macro Tower jumping around a whole file and searching and replacing. In between you choose a starter
creature, meet trainers, catch wild VimMonsters with a VimOrb and fight battles in which you hit by finishing a small editing
puzzle, not by picking from a menu.
Playing it here
Click Play and the house opens with a message log at the bottom that always says what the current goal is. Follow the bright path
on the floor to the first rune, then talk to the mentor. Press o for the VimTree, which lists your lessons, motions, party and run
statistics, and : for a command line (:help lists the commands, :w saves and :q starts a new randomized run).
Every run uses a random seed, so the maps differ between runs, and the game times you. Your finished runs and your best time stay in a personal leaderboard in this browser; there is no online ranking. Progress is saved in the browser too.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| h, j, k, l | move left, down, up, right |
| w, b, e, ge | word motions, once unlocked |
| 0, $, ^, gg, G | line and file motions, once unlocked |
| f, t, F, T, ; , | find a character, repeat the find |
| 1-9 then a motion | counted motion, like 3w |
| i | inspect or talk to what is in front of you |
| o, Enter | open the VimTree, focus a section |
| : | command mode (:help, :party, :map, :w, :q, :load, :heal) |
| a, x, dd, cw, dw, ciw | attacks in battle, as each is unlocked |
| f in battle | throw a VimOrb at a wild creature |
| [ and ] | switch party member |
| R | rename the current run |
| m | mute or unmute |
A few things worth knowing
The game teaches by locking. Most keys do nothing until a lesson unlocks them, and the game tells you what is locked. Read the goal line; it names the next rune.
Speed counts. The timer runs from the start and a quick finish earns a score bonus, but wrong keys cost points, so slow down in the drills.
Catch before you fight. Weakening a wild creature with attacks makes a VimOrb more likely to hold it, and the cw move (Focus Ball)
boosts the next throw.
It is a learning toy. The drills are small text lines; if you already use Vim, the first areas will be short.
Credits and licence
VimMonsters Academy was created by error311 and released under the MIT licence; the pictures and sprites are generated from the code and the sounds are synthesised in the browser, all part of the same repository and licence. It is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Vim project, and "Vim" is only used to name what the game teaches. We changed two files: the calls to the author's leaderboard server were removed, so each run stays in your browser, and the path of the pictures was corrected so they load from a game folder. The licence text is linked from this page.