Hoverboard
Platform: Javascript/HTML5
Randall Munroe's webcomic xkcd has been around for well over a decade, touching on everything from pop culture to science, love, and beyond, and it's garnered a pretty huge audience. To celebrate the launch of his new book, Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe has released Hoverboard, a very simple little platformer where you gather coins from a small playfield and drop them in a box. The end!... or is it?! Using the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to move and jump, you'll find your hoverboard can jump an infinite number of times and take you beyond the designated play area to explore a surprisingly huge black and white world with secrets aplenty. There's not much to do other than take in the sights and collect more coins, but with so much to find, all rendered in a simple but lovely black-and-white stickman style, Hoverboard is worth a romp as a great piece of interactive art full of secrets and references to everything under the sun.
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A fun and humorous game IMHO. The mechanics are a little jittery but I still played for what could probably be considered way too long. The real gem is the rest of the creator's website. Nothing like accidentally finding a good, nerdy webcomic. Brilliant piece of marketing really. I kindof want to buy his book now.
I guess that makes you part of today's lucky 10,000, in a totally meta way, to boot:
https://xkcd.com/1053/
His new book is probably awesome, but his other one ("What If?") is damned brilliant.
Note that explainxkcd.com has a full list of the comic/game's contents, along with some hacks you can use in the console (it's not cheating if the game's creator fully expects you to do it, right?).
It really reminds me of his other "game" https://xkcd.com/1110/
Really makes me want to make one like that
This is poorly made. That is a shame. Near unplayable
-might be a Chrome issue
Hi there! Sorry you're having problems. I just checked and the game plays smoothly in both Firefox and Chrome. If you're encountering problems, maybe you might want to try clearing your cache or restarting your computer? :) I didn't encounter any issues personally.
This game, like xkcd, is pretentious and underwhelming.
However it is much nicer looking than any of his comics (probably owing to the extensive use of photographs for silhouettes.)
"E" for effort.
Pretentious? What is it pretending to be that it fails to actually be?
Also, you need to look at Click and Drag (#1110, already linked above). And also Time (#1190; a viewer that I like is at http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ ), which won a Hugo for best graphic story.
I'm not sure Randall actually uses photographs for silhouettes. The trees, in particular, look more like fractally-generated constructs rather than anything that exists in real life.
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