Glypha III

The 1990s classic arcade game by John Calhoun returns in a web edition. Do battle with your lance and winged steed against the evil sphinxes to achieve the glorious honour of a place in the high scores.

This is a faithful recreation of the original with ninety percent of the work done by Kevin Wojniak who ported it to OpenGL in 2018. The latest port to the web uses emscripten and caps off more than half-a-lifetime of my involvement with the game: originally porting it to Mac OS X in 2001 and then coming back to port it to the web this year.

The port uses the icon originally designed by etherbrian and can play in two resolutions: 640 x 460 (no scaling in a window) or 800 x 600 (full-screen). Better yet it can be played using a gamepad or on a mobile. The game remains open-source  although technically has moved from the public domain to the MIT licence. Thomas Konings created the funny name generator and Samir Zahran the simplified front-page controller library. I will geek out on the technical details of the port later in a blog.

The game has been tested on the Microsoft Edge Xbox Series S  browser and plays very well.

If you like this game...

• Aerofoil (2021) by Gale Force Games - a recreation of Glider Pro also using emscripten
• Glypha: Vintage (2023) by John Calhoun - the ultimate version of the game by its original creator

How to play

• When using a keyboard: use the space bar and left/right arrow keys. To ensure your keyboard is focused - you must use the N key to start the game. 
• When using a gamepad: press once to activate the gamepad then A button to fly upwards and the left joystick to move left/right. Onscreen instructions should update to Xbox keys once the gamepad is active.
• When using a mobile: use the left top-two-thirds to move left,  the left bottom-third to move right and tap to flap and move upwards.