“If Potato Meets Flag Then” by joqlepecheur.
“[A] programming game, mixed with a platformer.”
When we think of the platformer genre, we all know some game design conventions. For instance, when we simply run into an enemy, it will damage or even kill us directly. Another example would be the winning condition: When we reach the flag or checkpoint of a level, we win. However, in “If Potato Meets Flag Then” you must break such traditions by altering several parts of the game’s pseudocode with the help of some visual programming gameplay.
There are two types of modifiable code elements in “If Potato Meets Flag Then”: The yellow ones, which represent the characters and objects of the game, and the blue ones, which stand for each kind of states like “[XXX] is running into a specific direction”. Each level will show you its scripts, which consists of yellow and blue frames. Those can be manipulated to you by dragging them around. That way, its gets possible to win a level not when the hero reaches the flag, but when the grass does. You could also change the ‘code’ in such a way that the character does not die when they collide with a foe, but the other way around.
The puzzle design is absolutely fantastic and gave me several chuckles, because sometimes the solution was so easy, but I could not think of it immediately. I just love how “If Potato Meets Flag Then” played with my expectations of platformer games, which makes it an excellent metagame in my books. One could also argue that it is even a bit of an educational game, because it can teach non-coding people what several basic coding elements mean. >>PLAY
