PuzzleScript is a way to make tile-based games that run on the web. It was created by increpare.

An interesting tidbit from the credits page: PuzzleScript's creator is/was flatmates with Terry Cavanagh, who made a bunch of popular and creative games: VVVVVV, Super Hexagon, and (my favorite) Don't Look Back.

The PuzzleScript games I've seen usually have Sokoban elements: pushing/moving crates to solve puzzles. The wrong moves can make a level unbeatable so another core element of PuzzleScript games is unlimited undo by pressing 'z'. Explore the gallery and check out increpare's portfolio of games.

Notable Games

Sokoboros

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I enjoyed this game the most. Sokoboros combines elements of Sokoban and Snake. The game's name is a clever pun that combines "Sokoban" and "Ouroboros"!

Atlas Shrank

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I enjoyed this game where you play as the Greek Titan Atlas who has been shrunken down and needs to escape a series increasingly complex of rooms.

Legend of Zokoban

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This Zelda-inspired game is made by Joshua Minor. Joshua's twitter feed has led me to many interesting projects and ideas, including PuzzleScript and PICO-8! If not for him, these posts wouldn't exist. According to LinkedIn, Joshua's been an engineer at Pixar for 21 years at the time of writing. How cool!

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Terry Cavanagh made this game. I'm reminded slightly of Don't Look Back: the main character is navigating a hellish and dangerous world to retrieve something beautiful.

Love and Pieces

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Love and Pieces is made by Lexaloffle / Zep, the creator of PICO-8!

Some Technical Details

PuzzleScript source code (backup) reveals some cool details:
- PuzzleScript has its own web-based code editor. I particularly like how it displays colors for the sprite pixels defined in text.
- Instead of hosting its own database of games, it integrates with GitHub's gist API. Every game is just stored in a gist in a user's GitHub account. For example, Atlas Shrank's gist is here. This is an interesting and clever way to avoid hosting your own server.
  - The code to post a new gist can be found in the shareClick function here.
  - The code to load a gist can be found in the getData function here.
  - play.html loads whatever gist id is appended to the url (which looks like: https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6994394)
  - I think there's a risk loading content this way: it could look like the website owner published content when really it was published by someone else. The content could be offensive or harmful. To mitigate this, if I use this technique in a project I will probably show a disclaimer on the website that this content is from an external user with a direct link to that user's gist.