A little nostalgic project I’ve wanted to build for a long time has finally come to life.
Many of us remember the classic area-closing arcade games where you gradually capture parts of the screen while avoiding enemies. I’ve always loved that mechanic and wanted to create my own version of it.
Recently I finally had the opportunity to build it using ZIM, and the development experience was fantastic. ZIM makes it surprisingly smooth to prototype ideas, iterate quickly, and bring interactive mechanics to life.
In the game, the player moves from room to room in a house — kids’ room, living room, kitchen, storage room, and more. In each level the goal is to close areas of the room until it becomes completely clean.
As the levels progress, the challenge increases:
- More enemies appear (the “dirt” you need to avoid).
- The spaces become harder to capture.
- Finishing a level requires more strategy and timing.
To add an extra layer of gameplay, players also collect letters while playing. At the end of each level they need to arrange those letters to form a word before advancing.
The theme loosely connects to the idea of preparing and cleaning a house for a holiday (Passover), but the core of the project is really about the gameplay and the fun progression from room to room.
It was a really fun project to build, and once again ZIM proved to be a great platform for experimenting with interactive ideas and game mechanics.
Now it’s time to start cleaning the house! 