Moai Alley

Moai Alley is a mobile-friendly puzzle game that takes you to the Easter Island, where you help the Rapa Nui carve and transport the iconic Moai statues. You need to carve rocks, build roads, cut trees, and properly envision a way for the statues to be walked to their pedestals with the least moves possible.

A game to test your spatial thinking and rationality.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Controls:

For the mobile users there are direction buttons on the left and an action button on the right side of the mobile screen.

Tapping or swiping in the direction where you want to move the player or interact with is also possible.

On PC use the keyboard Arrow/WASD keys to move/interact, Space bar to act.

Shortcuts:

[R] restart stage; [M] mute; [ESC] cancel action; [G] toggle board grid; [N] toggle water animation

Gameplay:

The game presents the usual moving block mechanic on a grid, the twist: you are required to pull the moving blocks (the Moai). Player can interact with the environment and perform the following actions: Carve Moai, Chop Tree or Pave road.
There is also resource management mechanic with three types of resources: Stone, Wood and Mana*.

Player has to carefully pick the order of actions because every action earns or spends specific resources.

Carved Moai walk at the cost of Mana, which is the only resource that you don't replenish.

Game elements:

                         

Example stage:

Hi-score:

At the end of a stage the score is calculated as follows:

• 1000 score for each Moai successfully erected on a pedestal
• 250 score for each other carved Moai
• 250 score for every Mana point saved
• 250 score for each Palm Tree spared on stage
• 50 score for each Sapling left on stage

JS13k Games:

The game was developed mainly in September 2023 for the JS13K Games jam. The current game version still respects the jam's 13 kilobyte restriction. That's right - the entire game is contained in 13,312 bytes!

Game Idea:

As I was digging into the "13th Century" theme, to my great surprise I discovered that the old accepted story of the Easter Island has been debunked!
A new chronology reveals that the first settlers arrived around 1200 A.D. and also provides different explanation on why the island was deforested and the civilization collapsed. The following infographic illustrates the timeline but also gives insight on what actually happened on the island:

There is much more to reveal, if you are interested here is a good start.

* MANA - the etymology of the word has Proto-Polynesian origin and we know the indigenous people of Rapa Nui are Polynesian. For them it means a form of supernatural energy that inheres in things or people. This word has persisted from Proto-Oceanic (meaning natural power; thunder, storm wind) in the Maori language still spoken today in New Zealand.