Xeonjia

About the game

The kingdom is frozen, and every year someone is picked as the "hero" and sent out to defeat the King of Evil, the one who froze it. This year it is you. You leave your house, say goodbye to your parents and walk out onto a world of snow, trees and ice, where most of the floor is as slippery as a rink. Once you start sliding in a direction you cannot stop or turn until something gets in the way: a wall, a boulder, a tree, a monster. Every map is a small riddle about where to push off from so that you end up exactly where you need to be.

Between the puzzles it is a proper little RPG. There are villages and cities with shops and houses to visit, caves and crypts and a tower to cross, quests to solve and characters who have something to say. You gain experience and levels, collect money and hidden treasure and spend it on better gear. The monsters are real: you punch them, throw snowballs at them, or mine the obstacles that block your path, and you keep an eye on your health bar. The story mode is complete, with 166 hand-made maps, and the game remembers where you are, so you can leave and come back.

It is also pleasantly small and clear. The art is pixel art in a pale winter palette, the music changes from place to place, and some maps have drawn hints that you can show or hide when a puzzle has beaten you.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait for the game to load (about 27 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). The first time, type a name for your hero (letters A-Z) and press "Let's start", then press Enter on the title screen. The game saves by itself in this browser, so your progress is still there next time; clearing the site data erases it. It plays best with a keyboard, and swiping on a touch screen also works. This edition has no links to other websites and no donation prompts. The game starts in your browser's language when it has a translation for it.

Controls

Tips

Look for the stopper first. Before you push off, find what will stop you. Most puzzles are solved by working backwards from the exit.

Use the turn keys. W, A, S and D let you face a direction without sliding, which is how you aim a snowball or talk to someone safely.

Hit M often. The world map shows where you have been and where the next story step is.

Turn the hints on. On maps that have them, the Show hints button (or H) draws the clue on the map, and it costs you nothing but a little pride.

FAQ

How long is it? The story mode is long: 166 maps, from your house to the King of Evil, and how long it takes depends on how much you explore.

Is the game scary or violent? No. The fights are cartoonish pixel-art battles with punches and snowballs.

Is my progress safe? It is stored in this browser. Use the same browser and do not clear the site data.

Can I play in Portuguese? Yes, if your browser is set to Portuguese the game starts in it, and you can change the language in the settings.

Credits and licence

Xeonjia was made by DeepDaikon: game, code and graphics, with music by Yubatake and translations by many volunteers (listed in the Credits screen of the game). The code is free software under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, and the full source of this version, with the small changes made for this site, is linked from this page. The game uses the Flutter framework and the Flame engine.

• Graphics and most of the music: DeepDaikon, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Music: "JRPG Collection" by Yubatake (Bandcamp), adapted, CC BY 3.0 (the tracks of the towns, routes, bosses, the tower and the game over, item and win jingles).
• Fonts: kobi-linear and dd5x7 by DeepDaikon (dd5x7 from m5x7 by Daniel Linssen, CC0), LanaPixel by eishiya (SIL Open Font License 1.1).
• Seven sound effects (collision, damage, dialog, explosion, money, punch and snowball) were made for this site and are CC0.

The licence texts, including the notices of every library in the build, are linked from this page.