The Pitiful Chasm Clamber

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Have you ever wondered why the Princess is so rich? It is not inherited wealth, favourable taxation or suspiciously creative royal accounting. Well, not entirely. Her true secret is a proven business model: from time to time, she clambers down into the nearby chasm—in a suspiciously Pac-Man-like fashion—and collects every gold bar, precious gem and priceless statue of herself she can find. Every last one. The Princess does not believe in the vulgar little concept known as “enough.”

Fortunately for you, the Princess is remarkably robust, as princesses tend to be whenever the plot requires it, and can survive falls from frankly unreasonable heights. Unless, of course, she lands on a cat—or one of the chasm's other disagreeable pets. Gravity can be negotiated with. Cats cannot. In this game, they have simply stopped pretending to be friendly.

To remove any lingering uncertainty: the game is completed only when every last gem, gold bar and royal objet d'art is safely tucked into her pocketsess. Leaving so much as one shiny trinket behind would be fiscally irresponsible—and, more importantly, completely out of character.

Engine versions:

My custom game engine ENGINE is made from following sub-modules:

ENGINE:
GRID:
MAZE:
IAM:
Prototype LIB:
WebGL:
MAP Tools:

Help:

Avoid nasty pets by jumping over them, ducking beneath them or, if you are particularly clever, arranging to be on an entirely different floor.
Close encounter with a pet is deadly for both.
If you cannot swim faster than a shark, do not compete in the shark's preferred discipline.
You can collect an extra life: the Princess: Standard Edition. Royal continuity is important.
Sometimes it may seem that there is no way back. There is. It is merely a very long one, because the chasm was not designed with your convenience in mind.
Falling is faster than climbing.

KEYS:

LEFT / RIGHT — walk or choose the horizontal direction of a jump.

UP / DOWN — climb ladders.

CTRL + LEFT, RIGHT or UP — jump in the chosen direction.

CTRL + DOWN — duck. Heroism occasionally means making yourself smaller.

F4 — pause or resume the game and briefly reconsider the chain of decisions that brought you here.

To leave a ladder, press LEFT or RIGHT for a small dismount, or use CTRL with a direction key for a proper jump.

The same applies when leaving a rope, because the Princess respects consistency even when physics does not.

To leave water swim to the edge and top.

About:

As the Pitiful part of the title rather subtly hints, The Pitiful Chasm Clamber draws inspiration from the legendary Pitfall and, even more heavily, from Pitfall II, both created by David Crane. Let us call it loosely inspired, since I took considerable liberties with the formula and set out to develop a classic snakes-and-ladders arcade game. Along the way, it also borrowed a few ideas from Hunchback and Lode Runner, because no respectable act of inspiration should stop at a single source.

What emerged is less snakes and ladders than cats, dinosaurs and ladders: 45 levels' worth, plus the occasional shark whenever the local wildlife budget permitted. All of it also serves a more serious purpose—preparing the ENGINE for the next 3D Princess game by first solving the comparatively modest problem of keeping her safe in two dimensions. Once that works, we can add a third direction from which trouble may arrive.

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