In the early '90s stupidlikeafox (or "Phil") was attending intermediate at Viard College. He had a passion for games, an interest in computers and at such an early age was very impressionable. He enjoyed school, and his teacher, Mrs. Moir was awesome. She encouraged young minds to pursue what they enjoyed, and since Phil was a bright student with an interest in technology she introduced him to two influential things that would eventually lead him to becoming the average coder he is today...

_{A couple other influential figures in Phil's early years}

 
Firstly, SLaF was introduced to a programming language called Logo. It was simple and out of date, but it was a good introduction. The commands looked like this:

FORWARD 100

RIGHT 90

FORWARD 100

RIGHT 90

FORWARD 100

RIGHT 90

FORWARD 100

RIGHT 90

There we have it, a square. Sure, he ony knew how to make patterns and shapes, but what this did was to introduce him to programming. So far, it had no real application and was all just for geeky fun.

_{^Geeky fun and another early influence. Yeah, I had a pocket knife and mullet.}

Now, the other, and main influence Mrs. Moir introduced Phil to was two small computer games. Both were pretty basic, with out-dated graphics compared to Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap, but Phil really enjoyed the smaller of the two games. It was a simple puzzle game where you place tiles onto the map, and try to get a ball from one end of the map to the other.

Now, why was this game so influential? Well, he was informed the game was made by his teacher's husband. One person made an entire game? But how? My previous belief was that games were made by SEGA and were probably staffed by dozens of coders. This was my first ever experience with an independent game.

_{Formative mind = blown}

The small, less obese and less hairy version of myself realised something. Anyone can code. Wait a sec, that includes me! I knew what I wanted to do, and that was to make bad games too...

Years later, I did exactly that! I now have a bunch of small Flash games out, most of which are small puzzlers as my love for the genre never died. For my latest project, I wanted to play with AS3 a bit more, and because my artist was busy I needed to do the art myself. So I decided to do something small, and retro.

I decided to try and re-create my most influential game I, and very few others have ever played. It truly is a tribute to that game. The graphics and SFX are minimal, the core gameplay is as similar as my memory allows, and most importantly, it has a similar feel as if I found the game today and replayed it. If you feel like wasting some time (Well, even more after reading this) you can try it for yourself below. If you do, I hope you enjoy it, but really, this game was made more for myself than anyone else. So if you don't? Meh. :P

Moir