How to play Q*bert
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| ← → ↑ ↓ | Move |
| W A S D | Move |
| P | Pause |
On phones and tablets, use the on-screen tactile D-pad under the viewport.
About Q*bert
Q*bert is a pyramid-hopping puzzle game. The board is a pyramid of 28 isometric cubes in seven rows, and every move is a jump to a neighbouring cube. A cube turns half bright the first time you land on it and fully bright the second time. Light the whole pyramid to reset it and move on to the next level.
You start in the middle of the bottom row with three lives. Enemies bounce around the pyramid, hopping to a random neighbouring cube each time they land. Jumping onto an enemy's cube or off the bottom edge costs a life and sends you back to the starting cube. Jumps toward the other edges are simply blocked.
Scoring, levels and tips
- Fully lighting a cube scores 50 points, and fully lit cubes stay lit.
- Falling off the bottom edge also costs 100 points, though your score never drops below zero.
- Level 1 has one enemy, level 2 has two, and from level 4 there are three.
- Remaining lives are shown under the pyramid, and your best score is saved in your browser.
- Tip: an enemy only hurts you when you land on its cube. One that hops onto yours does no harm, so if the cube you want is taken, wait for it to move on.
- Tip: the bottom row is the only edge you can fall from, so take care with down jumps there.
How it's built
The game is written from scratch in TypeScript on an HTML canvas, with no game framework. The pyramid is a 7 by 7 grid in which only cells whose two coordinates add up to less than seven exist, which gives it its triangular shape. An isometric projection turns the difference between the coordinates into horizontal position and their sum into height, and each cube is drawn with canvas paths as a diamond top and two shaded sides. The simulation is a separate module with no DOM code, stepped at a fixed 60 updates per second. Hits are grid-cell comparisons, sound is synthesized with the Web Audio API, and on touch screens you can swipe or use the on-screen d-pad.
This is an unofficial tribute written from scratch for the browser. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of the original game.