3D Waka

3D Waka is a maze chase game with a real perspective camera, twenty worlds deep. The dots, the four hunters and the power pellet are the bones of the 1980 arcade genre. Almost nothing else survived the trip.

Twenty screens, and most of them change a rule rather than the wallpaper. You stop being a ball and become a frog, a beaver, a hamburger, a flying carpet and a freighter. One screen has no monsters at all. One has a single monster who cannot be eaten, ever. One drains its own pond, a row at a time, because you ate the dam.

It runs in a browser, free, on four arrow keys and the space bar, with no account, no download and no level that asks you to wait.

Start with the Mushroom Wood

If you play one screen, play this one.

The Mushroom Wood is a purple forest maze with an ordinary-looking bonus standing in it. The red mushroom is worth five thousand points, which is more than twelve times the best bonus anywhere else in the game. The brief for it, the day it was built, was a five thousand point reward with a price to pay.

The price is that for about thirteen seconds afterwards the screen stops telling you the truth. The walls slide into a swirl of colour, the world swims on slow sines, and the whole maze breathes. It ramps in over two and a half seconds, so you feel it arrive, and ramps out over two, so the tail of it is survivable.

It is the only pickup in Alderhoard that charges you for taking it. Everything else in the game is a reward. This one is a bet.

The screens worth going out of your way for

In the order the game gives them to you, these are the ones that change a rule rather than the paint.

1. No. 5The Mushroom Wood

   Five thousand points for the red one, and then the screen stops telling the truth for thirteen seconds. The maze underneath never changes. Only your eyes are lied to.

   The only pickup in the game with a price attached, and the only one you can regret.

2. No. 15The Diner

   This family is fast, and ravenous. And you're a hamburger.

   The fries are worth three thousand and freeze you solid for a full second while Mom, Dad and two hungry children close in. It is the only bonus in the game you can sensibly decide not to take.

3. No. 16The Old One

   One monster. He cannot be eaten, ever. He fires a slow beam down any hall he can see along, and the beam shatters dots as it travels.

   A dot he breaks is cleared but never paid, so he helps you finish the level while robbing you blind. The four power pellets are a toolbelt rather than attack mode: F freezes him, E sends him home, M turns his own beam back on him, B puts the lights out. The maze is built of long straight halls because the halls are his gun barrels.

4. No. 17The Dam

   You are a beaver, and you swim faster than you walk. Every dam stick you eat drains one row of the pond.

   Draining a row turns your fast private swimming lane into mud you have to share with the cats on land, so the level makes you dismantle your own advantage in order to finish it. A pike patrols whatever water is left, and its territory shrinks as you drain.

5. No. 4The Swamp

   You are a frog. When the flies turn blue, any one of them standing on a clear straight line within five tiles is taken by the tongue. No aiming, no button.

   Blue time stops being a chase and becomes a hunt. The question changes from whether you can catch one to where you should stand so the lanes are full.

6. No. 11The Summit

   A mountain with real elevation and two ways up it. The road is a flat switchback. The chutes are single-file climbs straight up the face.

   The monsters tire on the chutes: a fourth climb with no breather and they slide all the way back down. The road rests them and the chutes break them, and only you can top out without stopping.

7. No. 13The Quadrants

   A stone cross seals the board into four separate yards. The only ways between them are the wrap tunnels at the edges.

   The monster pen sits inside the dividing ridge itself, and the monsters use the same doors you do. Four rooms, one law, and nowhere that counts as a corner.

8. No. 18The Dungeon

   Four corner lairs, four guardians, and not one of them will leave its own room. A dragon, a watcher, a mimic and a skeleton, each sitting on treasure.

   Each hoard turns only its own owner blue. The dragon sleeps until the fourth coin of its own pile wakes it, then breathes fire down a lane. The watcher blinks on a rhythm and slows you to a crawl while its eye is open. One of the three chests is the mimic. The skeleton cannot be eaten at all, only hopped over and knocked into a heap that reassembles itself. And a wraith walks the halls, leashed to nothing.

9. No. 12The Hearthside

   Nothing here hunts you and nothing here can kill you. The four monsters are house cats, and touching one pets it.

   The power pellets are saucers of cream, which call the cats toward you instead of sending them away. It is the fright mechanic run exactly backwards. Pet all four.

10. No. 20The Glasscherries

    Walk into a glasscherry and you push it one tile. Push it into a wall and it goes off, and it takes you with it.

    A monster that runs into one dies with it, which turns the whole board into a weapon you have to aim by walking. Every cherry sits in a straight dead-end lane, so it can never be shoved somewhere that seals the maze off.

11. No. 7The Masons

    The classic board, except six rectangular chunks of it were lifted out overnight, spun around, and put back.

    The walls hold, they just moved. The shuffle is flood-filled up to fifty times at load so every dot stays reachable, and nothing moves once play starts. The thing under attack is your muscle memory.

12. No. 19Long Haul Freighter

    A forced-scroll level in deep space. The freighter never stops, and falling off the left edge of the screen kills you.

    Five sectors roll past as you go: deep space, a nebula, an asteroid field, a dying star and the approach to the station. Mines sit still until you share a row or a column with them, then wake and follow at half your speed. Eaten monsters re-enter ahead of you rather than behind you, because there is no behind.

13. No. 10The Gelatin

    The monsters have no fixed shape. They wobble, squash and stretch as they move.

    The squash conserves area, stretching one axis and pinching the other by the same factor, which is the whole difference between reading as jelly and reading as a rendering fault. They still bite.

14. No. 14The Night Market

    A market street wider than the screen, which the camera scrolls across, under a sky that runs a whole day from night to noon inside one level.

    You and all four monsters are flying carpets, and the doorways are on the top and bottom edges instead of the sides.

15. No. 3The Undergrove

    The maze goes underground, and the floor has holes in it.

    Gap tiles have to be jumped, and you can turn in mid-air. Land in one on your feet and it costs a life. The monsters treat the gaps as walls and go around.

16. No. 8The Causeway

    A maze laid over water, on a tide.

    Tideway tiles are dry and dotted at low water and lethal at high. The clock you are racing is not the monsters.

The four hunters, and who they turn into

The base roster is four personalities, and they are the genre's four, stated plainly:

Gnash

Straight at you, always.

Snare

Meets you up ahead. Takes the tile four in front of you.

Creep

Gets in behind you, which is why it keeps ending up between you and the way back.

Mope

Half speed, no plan, no target at all.

Most screens re-skin those four. The Sand Roads sends a jackal, a mummy, a scarab and a sandwhirl. The Diner sends a family. Long Haul Freighter sends a crab, a squid, a saucer and a mine-beast. The Hearthside sends four cats who do not hunt. The Dungeon throws the roster out entirely and gives each of its four a lair and a rule of its own.

Everywhere else you meet the boogeymen: Boiler Baron, Gloom Stalker, Night Terrors and Slumber Shroud.

The camera is the reason it is called 3D

An earlier version of this cabinet pushed every wall sideways by the same amount to fake depth. It read as flat, and worse, the displaced wall tops buried whatever was standing behind them.

What it runs now is a real pinhole camera sitting behind and above you. Rows near the bottom of the screen are about forty-seven pixels tall and compress to about twenty-two at the top. Corridors converge toward the centre line as they recede. Side faces flip across the middle of the screen, so blocks to your left show you their right face and blocks to your right show their left, which is exactly what the arcade cabinets this descends from did.

Two deliberate limits keep it playable. The walls are low, about a third of a near tile, so they hide feet and never faces. And you carry a soft halo drawn on top of everything, so you can never lose yourself behind a wall. The bonus item floats above wall height for the same reason.

Collision and movement were never touched. Underneath the camera it is still a plain rectangular grid, which is why the headless tests can drive the real game rather than a model of it.

And the rest of the twenty

1. No. 13d Waka

   The original board in real perspective: every dot, four hunters, a power pellet in each corner.

2. No. 2The Sand Roads

   A desert maze under pyramid-topped walls, with a jackal, a mummy, a scarab and a sandwhirl on the roads.

3. No. 6The Foundry

   A maze in the heat of the foundry, with speed pills lying in it.

4. No. 9The Shipyard

   Steel lifts hoist you over the walls to their paired lift, and nothing can touch you while you are being carried.

Questions

Is 3D Waka free?

Yes. No account, no email address, no download. At least ten of its screens are committed to staying free permanently.

How many levels does 3D Waka have?

Twenty screens. Past level twenty it starts again at the first, so it does not end.

What are the controls?

The four arrow keys move you and space jumps. Jumping only matters on the screens with holes in the floor, and you can turn in mid-air.

Which screen should I play first?

The Mushroom Wood. It is the fifth, and it is the one people remember.

Is it actually 3D?

The camera is a real perspective projection, not an extrusion, so corridors converge as they recede and wall faces flip across the centre of the screen. The maze underneath is a flat rectangular grid, which is what keeps it playable.

Does it work on a phone?

It needs a keyboard, so it wants a laptop or desktop.