rotville.world
The website of Rotville, a perfectly normal town. Rotville is a series of short, deadpan stories about the residents who live there, posted on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. This repository is the site exactly as rotville.world serves it.
What is on the site
The main page has the town, the ways to watch it, and a small TV on Channel 3 that plays the opening seconds of the most-watched episodes.
Megabite is the first game. Megabite is a snake of iron blocks with a plug for a head, and he goes under the town eating the square things people leave lying about. He gets longer. That is the whole of it. It plays with the arrow keys on a computer and with swipes on a phone.
One Cent is the second. Nickelpig wants the single cent lying in the road outside Big Barry, the office building with one enormous eye on its roof, and he may only move while that eye is shut. Hold to creep, let go when the eye opens.
Lamp is the third. Fusegrin is a navy iron ball whose fuse is not a countdown but his lamp. The bulbs in a house go out one after another, and you roll him from room to room, up and down the ladders, to keep the whole house lit.
Down the Drain is the fourth. Holloring, a pink see-through jelly who keeps whatever gets lost down the drains, falls down a dark shaft that gets faster and darker the deeper he goes. A holler lights it up for a moment, whatever he catches floats inside him, and each pipe he hits knocks one thing back out. Three knocks and he stops, and the score is how far down he got.
Paper Round is the fifth: Paperboy, on Rotville's streets at night. Sprouted Doris walks on her roots with a satchel of envelopes and delivers the hellos nobody sent to the places people live in: a mailbox, a door, a post, a pipe, a bench, a file. A green flower over a place means someone is in, a grey one that nobody is, a red one that they are busy. You aim: ◀ and ▶ throw a hello out to that side, and it keeps her pace, so you throw a little before the place; in the slot it is two hellos. You set her pace too, hurrying her or holding her back. Shopping carts roll across the road, barrels roll down it, and bins, crates and puddles stand in it; a puddle stops her, because she used to watch from the puddles and still looks into one. Three slips end the round: a fall, a place passed by, or a hello to somebody busy, and a street with no slip gives one back. There are five streets, each its own night - Mailbox Promenade, Rothill, the Balcony District, the Canal District and Rotville Park - and then round again, faster.
Say Hello is the sixth. Gil Lister, a cheerful worm who lives inside the pipes, pops out of one pipe after another to say hello, and in the town's lore nobody ever says it back. Here you do: tap him while he is out. Shytan pops out too, under his umbrella, and tapping him counts as a miss. The pipes lose their caps one by one and Gil gets quicker, and three hellos nobody answered end it.
Pipe Dream is the seventh. When dreams clog in Rotville, Knightley is called: the dream plumber, a frog skeleton in a starry sleep cap. A dream comes up like a cloud in front of Snoreacle, the hooded idol that mutters in its sleep, and you lay pipe from the next pieces to carry it to the drain before it reaches an open end. If it does, it gets out onto the floor and leaves a puddle with a star floating in it, and three wet floors end the night. The first clogs are near and come with the pieces they need; after that, every clog cleared, the dream comes sooner and runs faster, and there is more old pipe nobody can move.
Pinball is the eighth. Mawrice, a ball of reservoir waste 1.3 metres across, is the ball, and the Old Sewerworks is the table. He eats what is in front of him, and only what is in front of him: the crates, cans and bits of pipe left on the table are eaten when he hits them head on, and anything he meets at an angle he glances off. The bumpers are Conelie, the cone that squeaks when bumped and knocks him off the wrong way. R, O and T at the top raise what he eats is worth, a lit kickback sends him back up an outlane once, and the canal between the flippers takes him in the end. Every table he eats clean, somebody leaves more, further apart, and "head on" gets narrower.
Fizz is the ninth: Puzzle Bobble in a FIZZCO syrup vat. Whisko, the works' mixer, who loves the bubbles and hates the paperwork, fires flavour bubbles up from the nozzle under the vat. Three or more of one flavour touching pop, and whatever they were holding up falls. Stroops turns the press's wheel on top of the vat, and every few shots the press comes down a row. Cracked Keyf stands on his ledge at the line with his clipboard, and when the bubbles reach it, he writes it down and the shift is over. Empty the vat and the next shift brings another flavour, another row and a busier press.
Every Road is the tenth: Amidar with a nose. Moo-Goo, a beast of the sewer tunnels who is mostly nose, sniffs every road of a small town of cabins. A road he walks from one crossing to the next is sniffed and stays damp, and a block whose roads are all sniffed he remembers, so it comes back to colour. Conelie sits on roads he has not sniffed yet and points him the wrong way, so those are sniffed from both ends. If he goes too long without a new smell, he forgets, and he cries for no reason. From the fourth town some roads are missing, so blocks run together into bigger yards with dead ends between them, and from the sixth the town is bigger; no two are laid out the same.
Rotville Road is the eleventh: Hill Climb Racing on one wheel. Farrat, a grey courier rat in a stamped cap, is harnessed to a single enormous wheel. He sets off down Rotville Road on gas, cannot recall where he was going, and keeps going anyway. Lean him back over the potholes and forward up the hills; in the air the same keys turn him over, and a flip he lands on his wheel scores. Boosting pushes him harder and burns gas three times as fast, and jerrycans on the road fill the tank. Bins and bags on the road sometimes have cheese in them, and cheese mends a tumble. With the tank empty he crawls on until the next jerrycan, and three tumbles and he sits down to remember. The hills get steeper and he gets faster the further he goes.
Errand is the twelfth: an egg-and-spoon race with a bell. Clangus is a tarnished brass handbell with thin arms and heavy boots, and a hurried step still sends his clapper against the brass. Hold WALK and he walks, let go and he slows down, STOP stops him short. His clapper swings back as he speeds up and forward as he slows, and every heavy step knocks it a little, harder the faster he goes; cobbles, kerbs, puddles, carts out of the side streets and the wind knock it too. If it reaches the rim it rings: the doors along the street open, windows light up, and people look out for the bad news. Get him to the shop before the candle in its window goes out. Three rings and everyone has come to the door, and an errand with no ring in it gives one back. Five errands, each its own street, and then the five again with less swing to spare; the very first errand is half a street.
Tea Cup Ride is the thirteenth. Uncle Brewster, a cream teapot with rosy cheeks, runs the Tea Cup Ride and stands on its hub pouring for every cup that goes round. Hold to pour and let go at the line, a little early, since the tea already in the air still lands. Over the rim and the cup is lost; under the mark and its visitor has gone without; three of those and the ride stops. The ride turns slowly at first and faster as the evening goes on, and his funny mugs join it, worth twice.
Lickety-Split is the fourteenth. Booblick, a bread ring with irritated eyes and a tongue that never stops, swings across the Bakery District at dawn on his tongue. Hold and the tongue sticks to the treat with the ring round it, and he swings; let go and he flies on, tumbling. He licks only what he craves, so a stale one leaves a gap to fly, and a treat he licks too long is eaten and drops him. Touch the street with any part of him, flying or swinging, and a baker flips him back up with a peel; the third time, the run is over. Now and then Misery Peter or Boss Edna drifts by high in the sky, and he can lick either and swing from it, for nothing; rarely, out of the way, there is a paprika that sends him straight up, a lollipop that makes his tongue longer for a while, or a golden ring that gives back a fall. Far up, now and then, hangs the moon of the series, which is cheese, and he can lick that too. The score is how far he gets.
Slots is the fifteenth: the one slot machine of the Lower Sewers Casino. Its reels spin as reels do, and most of the symbols on them are residents' faces: Old Parp, the Eyemare, Shushworth, Still Clive, Sackary, Kentut, Major Pain, Holloring and Masturbek; the rest are a 7, a BAR, a bell and a cherry. Pull the lever or press SPIN, and press it again to stop the reels sooner. Three of one face on the line and that resident comes out of the machine, over the whole game, and pays three times the bet; two of one face and that resident lunges up from the bottom of the screen, and any two of a kind are ringed. When the first two reels show the same face, the third keeps spinning a while longer. The machine starts you with 100 cents and keeps them in the end.
Rotville is on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
How it is made
The site is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no framework and no build step, and GitHub Pages serves the main branch as it is. The games are drawn on a canvas from pre-rendered sprites. The fonts are VT323, Lilita One and Overpass from Google Fonts; Slots also uses Bungee, Bungee Inline and Rye. Slots is drawn in HTML and CSS rather than on a canvas, from pre-rendered stills of the residents.
To run it on your own computer, start a static server in this folder and open http://localhost:8000:
python3 -m http.server 8000
| path | what it is |
|---|
index.html, assets/ | the main page with its styles, script, pictures, reel and music |
games/megabite/, games/one-cent/, games/lamp/, games/drain/, games/paper-round/, games/say-hello/, games/pipe-dream/, games/pinball/, games/fizz/ | the games |
404.html | the page for a link that leads nowhere |
robots.txt, sitemap.xml | what search engines read: every page to index, the main page and each game |
CNAME | the domain |
Rights
The characters, art, music, voice, episodes and code here belong to Rotville, and all rights are reserved. The repository is public so that GitHub Pages can serve the site, not so that its contents can be reused.
