Congratulations to that very nice and useful game! I loved to play around with the first 2 levels.<p>It's a pity that the project's state is totally unclear (at least to me, a casual visitor). Is it meant to become a community project? Is it a demo of something that will be sold in the future? The explaining text behind the "Unlock Levels" button adds even more confusion:<p><i>> Additional levels are currently being developed for you to play and enjoy. The 3rd level will be available for FREE only for players who sign up for my email list. Sign up now! You'll be notified as soon as the level is up. The level won't be available for unregistered users.</i><p>On the one hand, it sounds as if it is free, with some "forcing" to make more users join the project mailing list. On the other hand, this is totally discouraging contributions (because you aren't allowed to see the work-in-progress version), so maybe it's meant to become for-sale in the future.<p>I'd love to see it developing either way (although I think the community way is the more appropriate for this project). But as of now, it seems to <i>unify the disadvantages</i> of both worlds: Advertising the mailing list in a way that appeals neither to people who are willing to pay (as there's no clear pricing plan), nor to people interested in contributing (as it seems to more about announcements/"newsletters" than about how to improve and to help).
Very interesting idea, but something seems to be off with the email signup - it reports "Error: SMTP Error: Data not accepted. Mail could not be sent." for two addresses I tried, one of them @gmail.com.<p>However when I try to sign up a second time a minute later with the same address, it reports "Email address is already on the list".
Cute, but the inability to use keys before "collecting" them makes it painful to use as an experienced vim user. I'd love to have a mode that just unlocks all the navigation keys immediately. That would allow users to fly through the early levels, and then get slowed down by the first thing they <i>don't</i> know.<p>I found it particularly clever how the game forces you to use better navigation, by allowing you to skip over rocks that way.<p>Also, teaching capital HJKL early on seems like a good way to make it through the maze more easily; hitting the same key repeatedly (or rather, leaning on it until hitting a wall) seems like a bad habit to teach.
I learned how to use the controls of VI decades before I actually learned that VIM existed, through Hack/Nethack. I thought the controls were ridiculous, but I was a kid, so I just accepted it and learned them, little did I know how useful they would become later on in life.
Wow. This is absolutely genius. You want to be more productive with vim, but this is generally due to the fact that you have little time as it is. Learning vim hasn't always been in the best interests of my current task. Then there is this game. Brilliant.
I've gotten to the end of the level. Then I remembered that in the top corner of the Maze is another treasure chest. I go back there to the !! marks and type b but cannot enter that area.<p>The message reads "Remember: these are not words"... so how do I get in there? Can that part of the game not be solved?<p>I've tried Shift-B, ^ etc. Is anyone else able to get into there?
This is great! I've been meaning to learn the basic VIM keybindings so I can start using evil-mode in Emacs:<p><a href="https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home" rel="nofollow">https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home</a>
Nice! I got bored before I finished the first level, but not before I was trying to use stuff like ^,$ and ctrl+f, ctrl+b, 5l to get to the end of the tunnels faster and those didn't work. Is more advanced editing unlocked in later levels? or is this just for getting off the arrow keys? I can imagine some cool things in a more advanced vim game like * for teleporting between words, mm to drop a bookmark, :badd to get to a new level ...
It keeps crashing Firefox. I am sort of wondering what in the world it is doing to manage to kill both Firefox and Chrome!<p>Aside from that, it was not immediately obvious what W and B did, though a few seconds of playing around and it made sense. (That is about how far I got before it died the second time)
Thank you for this. I have been putting off learning vim for way too long. Nano does its job fine :P<p>However, I can't input my email.. it has more than 30 chars. As per source:<p><li><input id="email" name="email" maxlength="30" type="text" placeholder="Email Address" /></li>
I've had this idea forever, but wanted to make it work in the as a terminal-based application. Being a noob a systems programming, I got stuck at getting a PTY working in C that would properly forward the escape sequences from vim to the player's terminal.<p>I wanted to just create a program that was simply a layer between the terminal and vim, so all the power of vim was automatically available. The game was going to involve manipulating the environment (made of text) to different goals. I had all sorts of minigames in my head. Unfortunately, way too ambitious, and I never even properly started it. This makes me really want to though, if only I had more time..
I really like this, and if the price isn't too bad I'll pay to keep going as I've learn't more from this than when I've sat down to try to 'learn to do VIM'.
I guess there's only so much you can cover in this sort of game format (I'm doubting there will be a .vimrc level), but if it goes far enough to teach me to take all the lag out of navigating and editing, I'll be a happy bunny.
Just wanted to express my gratitude for creating such a game. It was a little saddening when I completed it though, as I really wanted to play more of it. Good job! I'm <i>really</i> looking forward to playing more levels. Do you have any plans for allowing others to contribute to level design or game mechanics?
Great little game! I never imagined a game would be so effective to get you to learn hjkl, but makes sense, most people learn wasd by playing games too.<p>I'm using a Macbook Air with Mac OS X Lion and Google Chrome and the gameplay is very smooth.
Wow. I've been aching to learn Vim for years, struggling through the rare occasions I have to use it while SSHing in to a machine. I've picked up more in 5 minutes with this game then I have in all that time. Very impressive!
After finishing the maze there is a roadblock at the bottom of the screen after talking to the girl who tells me about what happens if I step into water and there is no column above me... Is there a game beyond there?
has a bug with option "start searching when I start" enabled on firefox, clicking cursor keys makes firefox open up quick search and the game becomes unplayable unless you keep clicking escape after every other button click.<p>The game looks fine! I already see how my kids will learn vim :)
great! i can move around with h, j, k, l ..... so what now? nothing happens then i time out and get sent back to little person blocking the bridge. is it my browser, ie firefox?
Congratulations !
it was a very cool game.. hope we see the next levels soon and I also hope you'd open all the game levels even to unregistered users later. :D