Up in the Air

A short and casual browser game about collecting unwritten words out of the sky using a feather, made for FediJam 2024.

Team: Julian Fietkau, Nina, Randy Resnick

itch.ioGit

Play the Game

Spinning red pinwheel loading animation
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Setting gameplay controls to: Mouse movementVirtual touchpad

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Up in the Air

Version: 0.9.1A game for FediJam 2024Website: fietkau.media/up_in_the_air

Options

Controls

The game is controlled by moving the mouse cursor around inside the play area.The game is controlled through touch movements on an on-screen touchpad. Movements correspond directly to the play area.The game is controlled through touch movements on an on-screen thumbstick. Directional movements steer the cursor.The game is controlled through arrow or WASD key presses. Key rebinding and additional accessibility options are available.The game is controlled using the thumbstick of an attached gamepad accessory.

Graphics

Quality:

Shows the number of collected words and the progress through the course in the top left. Only recommended for repeat players and high score chasers.

Audio

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Audio theme:

Feather Customization

You can change the feather’s visual appearance. This is an aesthetic choice with no impact on the game mechanics.

Visuals

Render collectibles as bright green dots, replace clouds with dark background.

Font

Difficulty

This setting adjusts how close you need to get to a collectible in order to pick it up.

This setting adjusts the speed of the gameplay clock, slowing down all in-game movement and giving you more time to react.

Keyboard Settings

These settings only have an effect if keyboard controls are enabled.

With this setting enabled, movement gets triggered by tapping the keys instead of holding them. Tap a direction multiple times to accelerate, tap the opposite direction to stop.

Unable to store data: Your browser is preventing the game from using the local data storage, possibly due to strict privacy settings. Your in-game data will not be saved between visits.

Credits

Production / Direction / Programming

Julian Fietkau

@julian@fietkau.social

https://fietkau.me

Artwork

Nina

@misnina@mastodon.art

https://misnina.com

Music

Randy Resnick

@randulo@mastodon.social

https://randulo.com

“Out of Body Experience” (Lockdown Jazz, 2024)

External Resources

Music

“Canon in D Major” composed by Johann Pachelbel, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Sound Effects

“Collecting Item” by Ciarán Mooney (via Freesound.org)

“Glockenspiel” by Cabled Mess (via Freesound.org)

Fonts

“Cookie” by Ania Kruk

“Nihonium113” by Haley Wakamatsu / UkiyoMoji Fonts

“Atkinson Hyperlegible” by Braille Institute of America, Inc.

“OpenDyslexic” by Abbie Gonzalez (@antijingoist@hackers.town)

Logo: “Precious” by Bolt Cutter Design

Icons

Desktop, Arrow Pointer, and Mobile with Screen by Fonticons, Inc. (Font Awesome)

Engine

three.js v169 by mrdoob and contributors

Inspiration

Game concept inspired by: “High Delivery” by Ferry Halim

See README.txt for detailed licensing information.

You collected 0 words.

Here are a few sentences using some of them:

Can you think of anyone to whom you might need to write something along those lines? When was the last time your feelings were left up in the air?

You just unlocked a new feather:

Blue feather

Blue feather

Game Paused

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Introduction

The game's title screen, showing an open window through which a desk with some papers and a blue quill/feather can be seen, as well as lots of clouds in the background. Everything is rendered in pixel art. There is also the game's logo and three buttons labeled Start Game, Options, and Credits.

Up in the Air plays with the feather’s double purposes of flying and writing, and begins the game at the boundary between the two.

This is a short browser game created by a small team led by Julian Fietkau for FediJam 2024. You steer a feather through the sky in order to pick up words that beg to be written. The game is on some level dexterity-based, but does not require any particular skill level to finish. It is free and should run in all modern web browsers on desktop and mobile devices. One playthrough takes about five minutes.

The purpose of this game isn’t to be particularly skill-based, but it is possible to get better at collecting the words across multiple tries. Unlockable content awaits the particularly ambitious player. And then there are secret cheat codes as well, but you probably have to be on good terms with someone on the creative team to get your hands on one of those…

Background

A scene from the game where a red feather floats high up in the clouds, propelled by a red pinwheel. A cluster of silvery letters is floating on the right side, waiting to be collected.

The gameplay involves using a pinwheel to gently steer the feather through the sky, collecting as many unwritten words as possible in the process.

Since late 2022, my main social media presence has been my Mastodon account, and as of two years later I still feel very positive about the fediverse and its various inhabitants. So when FediJam was announced in late summer of 2024, I figured I'd join in and make a little game together with a few of my fedi-friends, especially since my last finished game had been well over a decade ago at that point.

With the game jam theme of “up in the clouds” in mind, I brainstormed for a few days until I remembered “High Delivery” by Ferry Halim, a Flash game I'd played a fair bit when I was younger. It seemed like something that I could take open inspiration from and put my own spin on.

I asked Nina whether she'd be interested in joining, and thankfully she was available. I'm rather helpless when it comes to artwork, but I know Nina for high quality and lightning-fast work, so that was a boon for a limited-time development process. A bit later on I asked Randy about including some of his music with the game, and he too said yes.

Off I went to code my way through September. Despite my late start with a blank code editor on the 14th, I just barely managed to put something together at my self-imposed level of quality and polish.

Credits

A screenshot of the game's options menu, showing five different options for gameplay controls, three graphics quality levels, music and sound effect volume sliders and a choice between jazz and classical audio themes. Also, a feather customization selection lets you pick your feather color from seven options. Besides this main options menu, there is an accessibility tab that is available, but not depicted on this screenshot.

It was important to me to offer a variety of customization and accessibility options to let as many people as possible play the game. The feather selection is a fun way to customize the experience.

For copyright-related reasons, this game is distributed in two versions. There is an open source version that can be found on this website as a Git repository. In addition, a “freeware version” (released unter CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) is available for download which has a few minor differences to the open source version, and which may be redistributed and rehosted, but not modified. See the included README.txt for details.

Production / Direction / Programming

Julian Fietkau
@julian@fietkau.social
https://fietkau.me

Artwork

Nina
@misnina@mastodon.art
https://misnina.com

Music

Randy Resnick
@randulo@mastodon.social
https://randulo.com

Inspiration

The game is inspired by “High Delivery”, a Flash game by Ferry Halim.

More detailed credits including for externally sourced assets can be found in-game.