Stolen Sword

Play:

Maximise Touch: press and drag away from where you want to go, then release — the character launches sword-first in the opposite direction, like a slingshot · Keyboard: none; use a mouse to click, drag and release with the same slingshot motion as touch

About:

Ian Chiao built Stolen Sword for js13k 2020, the competition that caps entries at 13 kilobytes zipped, and packed a full one-finger combat system into that budget: a single press-drag-release gesture aims, jumps and slashes at once, and the source code binds mouse and touch events to the literal same handler functions, so this was built touch-first rather than adapted for it afterward.

The gesture is a slingshot, not a flick — drag away from where you want to go and release, the same way you'd draw a bow. Four short stages spend their tiny file-size budget on real variety rather than one repeated loop: a wave-based combat gauntlet, a pure vertical climb, a lower-gravity underwater section with shielded enemies, and a large closing gauntlet with a chained enemy to thread. It's over in ten to fifteen minutes and ends on an unresolved cliffhanger — the concept was later carried into a separate paid mobile game — but the control scheme alone is worth the visit.

Credits:

Made by Ian Chiao, 2020. Published here under the MIT licence. Source code.

Phone check: loaded and played at 390x844 in Chromium on 7 Sep 2026; a correctly-aimed drag cleared the first wave and advanced into the second with zero console or page errors

Tags:

action · platformer · touch controls · js13k · one more go