Show HN: Arrow Hero

[sreyaNotfilc]

Wow, my niece had DDR music playing last night. It got me thinking about how fun it was to play that game and the keyboard equivalent of it.

Went to HN today and saw this. Looks pretty good. I wouldn't play it much, but I see an audience for it. It has a lot of potential as well.

1. Color coded directions 2. Progressive difficulty 3. Positive reinforcement (You're doing great!)

I find myself focusing on the top right but also using my peripheral vision to see the upcoming directions.

The better I am with my pattern recognition the more I can focus on the bottom of the screen and have the next 2-3 moves buffered (like a Simon game).

Very good job! I'll forward this one out to my niece. Hope it gets some traction for you!

A few suggestions for future release.

1. Add a variant of soundtracks and speeds 2. Add a variant of end points to change the point of focus. 3. Perhaps even add a "bomb" element. So, if you get X amount of points, you gain bombs (think geometry wars or pacman championship). The bombs will allow you to sort of reset the built up arrows when things get a bit difficult.

Score : 4400

[slantyyz]

>> Wow, my niece had DDR music playing last night. It got me thinking about how fun it was to play that game and the keyboard equivalent of it.

You should check out Stepmania:

http://stepmaniaonline.net/index.php?page=downloads

It's a free, multiplatform DDR work-alike that has keyboard song packs as well as pad song packs (you can map keys for the non-keyboard song packs too).

[alexggordon]

Nice job! This is really polished and you clearly worked a lot on it!

A couple of quick comments on it, after playing it for 15 minutes.

- I didn't realize until I had been playing about 5 minutes that the box at the top needed to match the arrow at the time that the arrow boxes went in to it. When I started out, I was trying to change as soon as I saw the new directions.

- Nice job on the animations. I think they're just right, and you really did a great job on using the right combination of CSS and JS (imho).

- As a guy with a left handed friend, and working on a cramped Macbook Air keyboard it would be really nice to have WASD support.

Again though, awesome job!

[danr4]

has an addictive potential, but the rotation gives me a headache after 5 seconds.

[chii]

agreed. The arrow keys should fall down (or move up) linearly, and that also allow you to see more of it, so you can plan ahead.

some music/beats wouldn't hurt either!

[talles]

I love this kinds of games.

If anyone wants any suggestions on the kind:

* Pel: http://armorgames.com/play/2011/pel

* Super Hexagon: http://superhexagon.com

* The Impossible Game: http://flukedude.com/theimpossiblegame

* Kung Fury: http://store.steampowered.com/app/373180

[mholt]

Wow, that's quite addicting. It's the simple things in life...

One suggestion - at first it was unclear to me that I had to type the arrow key right when it entered the box (since it came from the box also).

[Schwolop]

Uh, you don't. You have to have the box showing the correct arrow type as the arrow enters it. You can press the correct arrow type before the arrow reaches the box.

[janoelze]

Very cool. I did something very similar a few year ago. In the end people came for the soundtrack @zerstoerer threw together for the game.

http://tastatour.co/ https://soundcloud.com/zerstoerer/tastatour

[rawe]

"Sorry! We can't find that track." -.- ... wget *.wav; lame;

[DiabloD3]

"Aaaaaaand there goes my productivity for the day. Whoosh." "But Diablo, I thou--" "Whoosh."

[styluss]

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/484/

[maccard]

Fun, but stutters on my workstation, making it unplayable - FF 38.0.5, 32GB ram, Xeon E5 2690, GTX 780 Ti

[batou]

Similar kit here. Works fine over even RDP!

[negativ0]

maybe ur workstation run winXp 32bit?

[dmd]

I'd be interested to see what happens to people's scores if the colors are sometimes changed to not match (Stroop effect).

[usaphp]

Not sure how other commenters get such a high score, I can't even get past 500

[anon012012]

Got 1650 by tapping, then 3600 holding the keys. I think it's pretty boss to go beyond 4000 out of the blue, in 3 tries or so, though it depends on the random patterns. I had an easy streak around ~3000, then a confusing series. Consecutive Up/Down are harder than Right/Left, because of finger movement.

It would be nice with asdf, homerow style. Maybe you could even have 2 rings going on at the same time, for each homerow.

[skylark]

If you've played a lot of DDR or Guitar Hero, it's not too hard.

Some tips:

1. Don't look at the top of the screen - your mind needs some time register what it's seeing and react accordingly. Look a bit ahead - probably around 2:30 to 3:00 on a clock.

2. I find that tapping every key is actually easier. It helps you maintain a rhythm and reduces the cognitive load (do I tap or do I not?)

[wiz21c]

I painfully reach 36. Should I see a doctor ?

[NaNaN]

I had the same question. Until I found that I should press the arrow in the box, instead of the arrow near the bottom bar... (Ahh, I love other music games, and this one has no music?!)

[mkagenius]

Trick is to not do wrong _consecutively_ . By doing right lot of time your life increases (indicated in the bottom green line)

[personjerry]

4240 on my first try :D

I like to think that's impressive. It got difficult quickly.

[klibertp]

It is impressive. I got only 7 points on my first try... :)

[hoppi]

I got 4620 and felt like I had no idea if I was getting any correct from 4000 onwards! If there was a leaderboard this may consume a lot of my time today :)

[bottled_poe]

Seems a bit buggy on Safari 8.0. Sometimes the arrows don't seem to animate. Also, how do I know when to press the button? Is there some feedback I'm not seeing?

[spinningarrow]

This took me a while to realise but the box on top shows which arrow it can currently 'receive'. This changes when you press one of the arrow keys (it's empty at the beginning).

[kenbellows]

Press the button when it enters the box at the top after going around

[starshadowx2]

This is really fun, I must've done something wrong the first time because it failed right away, but second try I got 5866.

Do the arrows have to be in the square thing when you press?

[LiquidFlux]

Your keyboard arrows set the state of the box, if an arrow passes through with the same colour / direction as the box you get +points.

It mentions beneath the game you don't need to hit your keyboard for consecutive arrows of the same type.

[aonsager]

Very nice. I especially like that it's contained within such a tight space but still gives you enough time to react and plan ahead.

15701 points on second try is pretty good right?

[chm]

You should consider offering the circular mode along with a linear mode. It would be more enjoyable for me at least, having spent so much time playing GHIII.

[volent]

Nice game, it's really well made !

Bonus point for open-sourcing it :)

[RYUUSEiiSTAR]

6356, Stepmania was the shit when I was a kid

[Speakeasys]

I came here because I thought this was The Arrow CW TV show... :(

[Yhippa]

Nice game! Actually works well on the Nexus 6.

[arahaya]

my brain can't handle the fourth color