
Show HN: A game my 12-year-old daughter wrote - david927
http://www.mind-circus.org
======
scrollaway
Your daughter's awesome! She's going places. But you already knew that :) And
you're awesome too for encouraging her by sharing her work and helping her
with it.

I don't have feedback on the game so I'll just recommend a book which I think
is readable for a 12 year old (I'd also recommend it to anyone here): "A
Theory of Fun for Game Design"
([https://www.theoryoffun.com](https://www.theoryoffun.com)). It's a great
introduction to game design and it's full of fun cartoons.

~~~
alanfalcon
It’s a good book for adults, too!

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air7
This is really impressive for any novice game developer with no regards for
their age.

Some feedback after playing for a few minutes: It seems the game mechanics
only allows the "critical path" of advancing. By that I mean the only actions
that generate a reaction are the ones that advance the plot (with the
exception of moving between rooms and hints). This also causes some
frustration as I basically just try to click on everything and mostly nothing
happens and I ask myself if I'm doing something wrong.

I would suggest adding a click-to-describe layer. So for example clicking on a
character would say something about him/her (Maybe objectively, maybe
subjectively from the player's pov), clicking on an item, even one that I
don't need to interact with, says something about it. etc.

This is very common in adventure games and is a great way to add lay down the
story element for the game while at the same time provide the player with some
interaction while looking for the actual solution to the current step.

But again, really really great.

~~~
sireat
Was going to say, great art, but is there only one object to pick up and use?

I spent 5 minutes navigating rooms and mindlessly clicking and nothing
happening until picking up one object and finally using it to solve the
riddle.

Any red herrings?

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david927
You need to eventually get through the locked door. The first object is nails,
then you need to use the bucket which is in a cabinet in the bathroom and
click on the painting. She made it really tough, for some reason.

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z3t4
Nice data structure. No classes, just objects. Which makes it faster to
iterate. Feedback: Throw in a bunch of throw's for sanity checks like
if(!room) throw new Error("room=" \+ room + " window.location.hash=" \+
window.location.hash); It will help keep your sanity. And you will get rid of
an if(room) which will flatten the code, and less code paths are also good for
sanity. Smart using the url hash to store state btw. And use colors! Start
with fill colors, then progress into using colors for everything. Dad: Get her
a digital painting board.

~~~
ballenf
I took the b&w as an intentional artistic choice, especially given the color
use in the final(?) scene ("unlocked room").

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david927
It is intentional. That was something that impressed me about it -- exactly
how intentional everything is. Also, she has a digital art board but scanned
drawings on paper because she wanted a rougher, more sketchy look to it.

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8x8squares
Excellent game. Very well done!

Small suggestion: If items were intentionally made not to look like clickable,
it's fine. Otherwise, a simple 'cursor: pointer' on doors and items would be
better in my opinion.

Nevertheless, it's a wonderful piece of art. Your daughter has a promising
future.

~~~
david927
Thank you so much. That means a lot to her.

She says the items were intentionally made not to look clickable to make the
game more challenging.

~~~
code_duck
Has she played any of the classic LucasFilm SCUMM based games? Or their
predecessors, the text-based Infocom games like Zork?

~~~
jimnotgym
Start with 'The Secret of Monkey Island'. £2.37 on Steam [0]. I spent hours on
my Atari ST wondering how to get past the governor's dogs. With no WWW to look
for cheats I ended up asking at my local independent computer shop (remember
those), and one of the guys told me how to do it.

[0][http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_Secret_of_Monkey...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island_Special_Edition/)

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tejohnso
Seems very macabre for a 12 year old mind. There's a consistent, creepy mood
throughout all the screens that I saw, and I think it's very well done. The
quality of the artwork / art direction is impressive.

In terms of playability, I managed to pick up nails, and I tried to use them
on all five characters I could find but nothing seemed to work.

~~~
pbalau
You need to put the nails in somebody's food.

~~~
QAPereo
I like this kid... I bet we’re all playing her games within the decade.

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david927
Everyone: thank you for trying it. She's on Cloud Nine right now!

~~~
briandear
If she can impress the cynical folks at HN -- she deserves to be on Cloud
Nine! Congrats to her!

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BugsJustFindMe
Hey OP, how did you feel when your 12 year old said she wanted to make a game
that starts with the phrase "Aaron deserves to die"? Some people would be
concerned, but clearly you've been very supportive of the endeavor.

~~~
david927
Yes, I agree, it's a dark game. Luckily, my mother is a psychologist and
helped clarify to me what it's all about for my daughter, and why I shouldn't
be concerned.

Also her art style is already changing again and the next game will be
something completely different.

~~~
djsumdog
Some of the best game developers have really dark minds. Look at the artwork
fro the original Warcraft or the Doom guys.

~~~
eps
You don't say -
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=by24CkOxXQ4](https://youtube.com/watch?v=by24CkOxXQ4)

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muzani
I thought 12 was a really young age to start making games, but then I realized
I made games like this too at 12. Both code and art.

A lot of my game making friends from that group became millionaire game
developers by 30.

I didn't really accomplish much besides cutting my teeth doing project
management, debugging, learning the horrors of waterfall.

I would love to see the new generation continue this.

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah it reminds me a lot of the HyperCard games me and my friends would make
as kids.

What tools are kids using these days to make point-and-click style games like
this?

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twic
It has a very strong HyperCard vibe? Has its creator used HyperCard? If not,
has she played a similar kind of game? It would be super interesting if this
was a parallel reinvention.

~~~
david927
No, she's never seen HyperCard but I think she's played a similar game in
terms of game-play before. I'll have to ask.

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yorwba
I think it might be necessary to preload the game resources, otherwise the
game becomes unplayable on a slow connection with a round-trip > 500 ms (and I
guess the server is under heavy load right now). Well, not exactly unplayable,
I ended up just looking at the filenames in the requests that were sent to get
a feeling for what was happening.

Well done!

EDIT: I noticed that there are 'pills' in the list of items, but none of the
rooms has them. Should have taken your pills, Nathan!

~~~
david927
_I noticed that there are 'pills' in the list of items, but none of the rooms
has them. Should have taken your pills, Nathan!_

She said this was her favorite comment. It had her on the floor laughing!

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throwaway2016a
First off, this is wonderful. I have a 2 year old daughter. A little too young
to be coding but I look forward to seeing if she gets into it. The art is
pretty great too.

My only feedback, it really needs UI states. Like when you hover over a button
or an item in the room that an action can be taken on. Otherwise it is too
hard to figure out what is clickable and what is not and it becomes a random
clicking game.

I still do not know how I got out of the first room except through random
clicking.

Edit: ahhh... it's a vent.

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chatmasta
Very cool. I finally beat the game, although I did need to look at the source
code. The most confusing thing to me was that you need to find the items in
order. I kept clicking on the knife wondering why it wasn't going into my
inventory.

Also found a few cheats :P (#locked_room).

Seriously though this is really impressive and I love the art work... it
really felt like I was in those classic red room games from a decade+ (!!!)
ago

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zachlatta
God, I am in love with this. Your daughter is amazing.

12 years old or not, this was the highlight of my evening.

~~~
david927
Cool! Thanks!

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merpnderp
All I can do is click on most of the doors, pick up the nails, and click on
the hint. Nothing else seems to be interactive. Anyone have a hint on anything
else that should be clickable?

EDIT: Figured it out. What a brilliantly designed game....course now I'll have
nightmares. That final screen....Well played.

~~~
singularity2001
Figured it out.

I feel so dumb. there's nothing I can do in this game. so frustrating. HELP!

~~~
david927
Read through the comments here, a lot of the trickiest parts are explained. If
you still need help, ask on her Twitter feed.

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dingdingdang
Great art & concept. Tech feedback wise: I'm getting an odd ~2 second delay
whenever I click something which is making it bit difficult since it's a point
and click adventure - might simply be the server that's mildly overloaded; you
could put it behind cloudflare?

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darepublic
Good work! It would be nice when you mouse over clickable items that their
outlines glow or something :)

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kernelbandwidth
As an adventure game lover, I think this is a great little game! I love dark,
macabre adventure games and I'm really digging the art style here. The mood is
very consistent and the creepiness really comes across. Your daughter has done
a great job!

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dan_mctree
Cool little game! Loving the art and the morbid story. It was tough as nails

One nitpick: sometimes the game would seem to get unresponsive if I clicked
the little hint door (it'd get stuck halfway open). Only spamclicking around
for a while got me out of it

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jugg1es
Really loving the art style. I'm also impressed with the code quality. Way
above what I would expect a 12 year old would be capable of. I've seen college
students that would struggle with something like this. Keep it up, kid!

~~~
nojvek
Did she draw everything by herself? That is amazing. I wish I could draw like
that. On second day of 2018, I’m already jealous of a 12 year old
accomplishing more than me :(

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westmeal
Does she like Tim Burton? Jokes aside, I'm really digging this sketchy art
style.

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emmacastor
This was such a cool little game! I agree with the comment that assets should
be preloaded. For some reason the only item image that ever showed up in my
inventory was the nails. I spent a really long time looking for the bucket
only to realize that I had it already and could use it on the plant. None of
the other items after that appeared in my inventory, but I just trusted they
were there and was able to proceed through the rest of the game. I had to look
at the source code for help, but I was super impressed by the clarity of the
code there too. Nicely done!

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alpb
Reminded me of Crimson Room & Viridian Room from back in the Flash Player
days. [http://escaperoom.net/page-top100.html](http://escaperoom.net/page-
top100.html)

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davidcamel
I spent about 15 minutes just having fun with the mood, theme, artwork, and
"feel" of the game. I had intended to spend two minutes tops. This is an
engrossing and genuinely wonderful game :-).

~~~
david927
Thanks!

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cdevs
Is her journey more for the code or the ability to create games? The artwork
is pretty cool I some how assumed you took part in the art. I remember being a
good doodler but lost my attention in putting to much effort into a detailed
sketch. I loved games and coding but at a young age probably would have taken
some of the short cuts available today. It's cool either way hope when I have
a kid they are open to tech and creating something.

~~~
david927
She only got help coding -- that's all her art. She's been working on it a
while.

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pbalau
I think there is a bug in the bathroom, the bucket won't show up (but if you
click around you'll get it in the inventory).

Very impressive from a 12 years old.

~~~
merpnderp
I just assumed the bucket came from under the sink.

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kakarot
It won't load for me on Firefox, linux, disabled ad blockers. Works on Chrome.

edit: Well I guess not. I can't click on anything but the hint cabinet.
Clicking on the bottom left corner of the moved me to a new room once, but I
could not reproduce it.

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ai_ja_nai
Nice adventure, but I got mad at "1-item-at-time" picking rule. I'd rather
prefer all of them being collectable, instead of putting an ordering that
forces you resorting every time to the Uncle. Very nice, though. Keep it up!

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aetherspawn
Doesn’t fit on portrait iPhone 6 screen

I expected it wouldn’t be perfect and I’d have to wrangle left and right, but
about an inch is missing off the left of the page even when you scroll.

~~~
la_oveja
this is the most underground game I've seen in years, and you expect to work
flawlessly on your iPhone 6. some people need to remember the Macromedia Flash
era...

~~~
james-skemp
Samsung Galaxy S7 has the same issue. Will probably try it out on my computer
later though.

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cpfohl
Anyone have a friendly hint of how I can off my dear brother? I can't find any
plants to water...And what kind of plant survives behind a painting w/out
light!?

~~~
la_oveja
Look at the end of the corridor

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cpfohl
Yeah, found that sapling. I assumed that's what it meant...I'll keep poking.

~~~
cpfohl
Interesting. I hadn't found the bucket.

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phatbyte
Awesome art style, but I wish the toolbox had labels, after I watered the
plant, it transformed into a pumpkin and gave an unknown item. No idea what to
do with that :X

~~~
david927
It's record. There's a phonograph to play it somewhere in the house

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itronitron
Looks interesting but all I get is a static picture, the only thing that is
interactive is the hint thingy, I am using Chrome.

~~~
david927
Click on the drain to go to the dining room. Then look for nails...

~~~
itronitron
thanks

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la_oveja
I played the game twice, but couldn't fully understand the story. Any hints?

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sudouser
first of all congratulations and as someone already said it doesn't fit in the
iPhone, also the click area of items is too small, finally the tutorial could
have a previous button

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R4FKEN
too difficult for me...

~~~
david927
From her: Agreed -- I made it a little too hard but did you see the button at
the beginning that shows how to get hints? (Also, you can get out of the first
room through the drain.) Thanks for the feedback!

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sumpygump
This was very cool. Thanks for sharing!

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kevinwang
I'm stuck after I killed Simon :(

~~~
david927
Check the hints. (Bella is knitting..)

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dingo_bat
There are some bugs in that part. I saw the knitting hint and clicked on
bella's knitting pin. But it didn't appear in the inventory for a loooong
time. After about 5 minutes of exploring all the rooms, it showed up.

~~~
sudouser
websitesseems to be suffering hacker news hug of death

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sharemywin
pretty good for a 12 yr old.

~~~
david927
Thanks. I helped her with the coding -- she's still learning Javascript -- but
that was the only help she got. She really worked hard on it for about a year.

~~~
tux1968
That's really impressive, she should be proud of what she's done.

As for me, i'm not too proud of how far I got... couldn't figure out which
painting had a plant behind it or what to do next.

~~~
david927
from Sophie: Check on the painting in the hallway. :)

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sudouser
drawing smells MKUltra

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ogdoad
"You can only solve it by doing the crime yourself." They would call this
"warning signs" after the fact.

