Up the Vine

Up the Vine is a Playdate arcade platformer about climbing, bouncing, and scrambling through a jungle canopy while collecting diamonds and dodging enemies.

Start on a platform, grab vines, collect every diamond, and survive long enough for the jungle to grow around you. Each cleared set of collectables advances the level, restores your lives, and adds another vine to the screen.

Controls

Input	Action
A	Start from the splash screen
D-pad Left / Right	Move on the platform or while airborne
D-pad Up / Down	Climb while attached to a vine
A	Jump from the ground or from a vine
B	Ground pound while airborne
B	Drop from a vine into a ground pound
System Menu	Toggle mute or view credits

Gameplay

• Collect diamonds to score points.
• Clear all diamonds to advance to the next level.
• New vines and collectables appear as levels progress.
• Avoid vine enemies and flying enemies.
• Getting hit costs one life and gives the player a short invincibility window.
• The game ends when lives reach zero.
• High scores are saved with Playdate datastore support.

Features

• Splash, gameplay, game over, and credits screens.
• Animated player, collectables, vine enemies, and flying enemies.
• Procedurally placed vines, diamonds, and enemies.
• Title music, pickup sounds, hit sounds, game over audio, and movement shuffle audio.
• Mute toggle in the Playdate system menu.
• Persistent high score storage.

Project Structure

Path	Purpose
UpTheVine.lua	Main game loop, state transitions, HUD, menu items, and lifecycle hooks
player.lua	Player movement, climbing, jumping, ground pound, collisions, and animation
level.lua	Level setup, vine spawning, collectable spawning, and level progression
vine.lua	Vine sprite drawing and geometry helpers
collectable.lua	Diamond collectable animation and cleanup
vineenemy.lua	Enemy that patrols vertically along vines
flyingenemy.lua	Enemy that moves horizontally across the screen
platform.lua	Platform collision sprite
particle.lua	Hit and bounce particle effects
sound.lua	Music, SFX, mute state, and audio lifecycle handling
highscore.lua	Saved high score data
constants.lua	Collision groups and debug flag
images/	Playdate image assets
sounds/	Launch/title audio
pdxinfo	Playdate package metadata

Development

This project is a Playdate Lua game. You need the Playdate SDK installed, with pdc and the Playdate Simulator available from the SDK.

Build the game from the project directory:

pdc . UpTheVine.pdx

Run the built game in the Playdate Simulator:

open UpTheVine.pdx

If your SDK tools are not on your shell path, use the full path to pdc, for example:

/Applications/PlaydateSDK/bin/pdc . UpTheVine.pdx

Credits

• Created by: Iain Bennett
• Programming: Iain Bennett
• Art and design: Chris Hagen, Iain Bennett
• Music and sound: Iain Bennett, Aaron Sheppard

Package Metadata

• Name: Up the Vine
• Author: Mathan Games
• Bundle ID: com.mathanca.utv2
• Version: 1.0
• Build number: 13