#1: Welcome to Pumpkin!

Welcome to Pumpkin, traveler! You might be wondering what kind of game you're looking at. Let me get right to it:

Pumpkin is a party game that takes place in a time loop. You begin as a lonely orb in a sparse map, like the below image. The objective is to move your orb (arrow keys, WASD) to the green exit block (in this case, the bottom-right corner) to earn points.

Easy, right? Well, I wish.

Should you miraculously succeed, you'll be given a new exit block. However, an evil clone of you that repeats your exact movements will also be created. You must avoid your evil clone at all costs!!

Should you manage to complete all rounds in the map, you shall bask in this magnificient glory:

A bit of history

Pumpkin has been a passion project of mine since late 2020. I got the idea of the game's concept from a neat 2019 mobile game called Does Not Commute (Google it!). The game is played essentially the same as Pumpkin, except they used methods of transportation you'd normally see today, like cars and UFOs, instead of dots.

Does Not Commute released back in 2015, seven years ago! The map you see in the above demo images and GIFs was the first level I created for the game, which I had prototyped on Khan Academy.

Late 2020 was when I decided to make the project a standalone webpage. Back then, Pumpkin looked like this:

And because of Voronacirus, I had nothing to do at home, except grind away at the game. Now, it's 2022, and I'd like to think I have something relatively presentable. That's what brings you here!

Enough history.

Let's play!

Close this window and create an account. You can click go as guest to create a guest account; no need to type a password (only a username).

Then, open the menu bar on the left side of the screen (the button with the arrow pointing right) and press play.

You'll see this room browser. Click on + create room.

Once you're in a room, click on choose map to... choose a map.

Now, you're all set. Click on start to get rolling! If you want to play a different map, you'll currently have to leave the room and create a new one. This will obviously be improved in the future.

There is also multiplayer support. Others can join your room before you hit start. Anyone who joins after can only spectate.

Now for some burning questions you may or may not have:

Do I have to register an account?

No, you can log in with a temporary guest account. I'd imagine you aren't very trustful of a site that has a "Not secure" tag in the top-left corner. I'm working on that! :)

I actually don't keep track of any exact passwords. There's a nice Reddit post that explains how big companies know you typed the right password or not: here!

Something is not working / just broke...

Please let me know what happened! It's never your fault if something breaks.

In some cases, you can open the developer console (inspect element, then console) and show me any errors / warnings (red / yellow text) you see.

The game is really laggy!

There's a few solutions I can think of:

1. Enable hardware acceleration. This allows your GPU to do most of the drawing work, instead of your CPU. Each browser does it differently; this is what it looks like on Chrome:

2. Resize your window. Simply making the screen smaller works really well.
3. Wait for me to get my **** together. It's really my fault, to be honest.

If you mean high ping, I unfortunately can't fix that. I'm running the server on my computer, so if it's not your internet, it's certainly mine.

Can I make levels?

You can try. There is a sort-of functional level editor, though playtesting does not work at the moment.

What happens if I hit my evil clone?

Because hitting your evil clone is strictly forbidden in Pumpkin (for your safety), this cannot happen. Should it happen, though, it'll be like... you forgot what happened.

Why is it called Pumpkin?

The first map I ran a multiplayer test on was called Pumpkin, and it stuck!

The website name is Pumpkins, though?

The two other domain names I wanted were taken... I will get them back I promise

Why are you releasing an unfinished game?

Three reasons:

1. Scalability: I have thoroughly playtested Pumpkin, obviously. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a game! However, a question I need to answer is whether this project scales well enough. That means putting it out in the wild for everyone to break.
2. Testing: Surprise, surprise! My programming skills can be very questionable. Pumpkin is still massively work-in-progress, and so there are certainly a considerable number of bugs in it. With so many things on my TODO list, it's hard for me to take the time and test every game feature after every update I make. That's where you come in!
3. Why not: Why not