asciijump: All but the bitter cold

I went on a ski trip once, but I didn’t do any skiing. I despise snow, and I don’t enjoy cold weather. 🙄 About as close as I want to get to actual skiing is asciijump. I’ll show you a screenshot, but it doesn’t do it justice.

The Debian package page bills asciijump as a “very funny multiplayer game,” and I would agree completely. The animation is simple but faithful, and you can see both skis as you fly off the jump … and as you face-plant into the hillside. I admit I did laugh the first time I tried it, years ago.

Controls are very simple, and yet the game itself is tricky at best. Pick a hill, press enter to drop, and then press enter again and hold it. With luck, you’ll leap and fly. It seems easy, but the timing is brutal.

For hot seat play, you have the option of picking a name and dominant colors, and asciijump keeps track of who scored what through a “world cup.” asciijump is prepared to handle networked games as well, but I didn’t test that feature. 😐

I honestly don’t have any complaints about asciijump, aside from the fact that it will take some time to learn how to score consistently. Of course, part of the fun is watching your little ASCII ski jumper plow a furrow down a mountainside, face-first. 😈

P.S., for added geek points, start asciijump with either the -m or -mf flag. Trust me. … 😀