Poolside

Friday, August 21, 2020. 3:27 PM CST. I was just about to join my mother at the poolside of our condo when I remembered: the Extra Credits Game Jam had started! I quickly looked up the theme before heading out: Take Care. I would eventually decide such an intimate theme calls for an honest-to-life expression of people caring for each other, and it just so happened that our conversation as we lounged by the poolside that afternoon fit the bill perfectly.

Poolside is an interactive, to-scale drawing of a summer afternoon on a single sheet of paper (please avail yourself of the fullscreen button in the lower-right corner for the best experience). You play as a yellow square that represents me. Use WASD, arrow keys, or the left analog stick of a controller to move me, and use space, shift, ctrl, or any controller button to jump, dive, and surface. A shoddy attempt at closed captioning is included, which you can turn on and off with the click of a button in the upper-left corner of the page.