Try It

https://morse.interfinity.tech/

Overview

For this project I wanted to explore the idea of Morse Code communication, and combine it with the idea of AI, creating a juxtaposition between old and new tech. So I made this 2D puzzle/escape game that is partially inspired by The Escapists 2, where the player have to find their way out of a complex prison by collecting items and solving puzzles. There is an AI offering to help the player escape, at first it seems just like a guide to the game, but eventrually it reveals its true purpose and ask the player to help it take over the world.

Process

I started by drawing the tile map using Tiled. Instead of drawing the entire map at once, I could draw individual tiles, each 32px by 32px, and then assembling them into the entire map. In this way, different types of tiles can have different properties, such as a floor tile will have no collider and allow the player to pass through while a wall tile will have a full collider and block the player from passing through.

Then I exported the tile map as a JSON file so game engines could read it. I choose to use Phaser (https://phaser.io/), a JavaScript 2D game engine that works in a similar way as p5.js or three.js.

Due to the limitation of Phaser at rendering texts, I created most of the UI elements with HTML/CSS, using "position: relative" and "position: absolute" to place them on top of the Phaser canvas. For the game graphics and UI, I decided to go with this black and white style to create a sense of tension.

The game Objects and Items are also in this black and white style. The player is a solid white square, which creates a sense of ambiguity in the plot—is the player human, or just another kind of AI?

In addition, after adding sound effects and a voice for the AI, I found that for the sound files to play, the user must first click something on the page. So I decided to add a start screen prior to the game, and the player has to click the start button to begin. The word "Morse" in the title will flash in the Morse Code pattern of a word important in the game.