No Time To Play

Buzz Grid is an abstract arcade game loosely inspired by classics such as Pac-Man and Robots. Navigate the eponymous grid, collect the green bubbles and don’t get zapped. Controls: arrow keys or W, A, S, D.

(You can also hit M to mute the sound.)

Compatibility

Buzz Grid has been tested and found to work on the following browsers:

• Firefox 3.6
• Opera 11 (you may want to get the widget)
• Arora 0.11.0 (WebKit 533.3)
• Chromium 6 (WebKit/534.3) — thanks, slackwrdave

It won’t work on Konqueror 4.5.5 due to absence of text support in its canvas implementation, and IE8 or older due to complete absence of canvas support.

Since the control scheme is keyboard-based, the game may interfere with certain browser features or plugins, such as search-as-you-type or Vimperator. Any compatibility reports would be appreciated.

F.A.Q.

Q: Why W, A, S, D and not the arrow keys? Everyone will naturally reach for the arrow keys.

A: As explained here, it’s because Web browsers handle special keys each in its own way, and it’s not worth the trouble. I found a hack to make arrows work in Firefox and Opera; that will have to do.

Download

Source code is available under the MIT license.

Credits

Many thanks to my usual beta testers Ali and Nightwrath, but especially Dewi and Kelketek for their excellent improvement ideas.

Sound effect courtesy of sfxr. You can grab them from OpenGameArt.org.

To Do

As of September 19, 2011 there are seven levels; one or three more would be a nice bonus.