Swap Box Reloaded

There is a cooperation game experiment named Swap Box Turbo whose concept is simple yet funny. Both players control a little square that can jump across platforms. The level is scrolling and the squares die when they fall or when they touch each other. It's nothing more than a two-player scrolling platformer except from that very detail : every two seconds, both players controls are swapped. The result is a game of concentration, rhythm and cooperation with lot of fun. Who the hell has touched the other and caused the death of both players is the eternal question. Here is a link to Nifflas website, the creator of the game.

One day, I played this game with a friend and we both enjoyed it. But the game is very short and we were not completely satisfied. Because, yes, when you have spent a whole hour to complete a 90 seconds level which doesn't have a proper ending, you feel frustrated.

So we decided to make our own version. The opportunity was gold to experiment with game development. For a simple game like this, playing directly in the browser is convenient, so the Phaser Javascript library has been our way to go. This game engine is simple and leverage the power of the WebGL renderer Pixi.js. We also wanted procedurally generated levels. This adress the problem of the game being too short. So we made a seed-based system, where the seed is the name of the level.

Here are some characteristics of the game :

• The game is playable in browser (Chrome or Firefox are recommended), with one keyboard for both player.
• The music along with some visual hints help the players to feel the swap tempo.
• All levels are potentially infinite. They are generated automatically according to a seed, and can be re-generated identically from the seed.
• The variety of levels is easily expandable because we use a concept of biome (as in Minecraft) to generate the levels.

Play the game or see the code on GitHub