👑 Rhetoric Escape

Save Princess Prosa from the evil Warerio! A Mario-World-style platformer for English class in which pupils solve riddles about stylistic devices. Short enough for a lesson starter (about 10–15 minutes): three quick levels (alliteration, simile, metaphor) and then straight to Warerio’s castle, where the boss battle adds personification, hyperbole and onomatopoeia and ends with a metaphor review.

No installation, no build step, no dependencies – plain HTML5 canvas + vanilla JavaScript. Works on desktop, tablets and phones (touch controls appear automatically).

▶ Play

Open index.html in a browser, or play it on GitHub Pages: https://simon23-12.github.io/MINIrhetoricescape/

Action	Keys	Touch
Move	← → or A D	◀ ▶ buttons
Jump (hold = higher)	Space, ↑ or W	▲ button
Run	Shift or X	RUN button
Answer a riddle	click or 1–4	tap
Back to map	Esc or 🗺️	🗺️

🎮 How it works

• World map with four levels – clear a level to unlock the next one (progress is saved in the browser).
• Levels 1–3 are short side-scrolling platform levels. Their names (Sunny Meadow, Sunset Beach, Frosty Peaks) deliberately don’t give away the riddle’s answer. Stomp the ink blots (they yell clichés like “BORING!” when squashed), dodge the spiky ones, collect coins, hit ? blocks and hit the checkpoint flags.
• At the end of each level a Riddle Gate guarded by a wise owl asks a riddle about a stylistic device. Every wrong answer costs a heart (5 per level) and shows a hint; the right answer explains the device with a definition and an example.
• Wisdom Scrolls 📜 hidden in ? blocks give a 50:50 joker for any riddle.
• Level 4 – Warerio’s Castle is a slightly harder platform level that ends in the boss battle (see below).
• The Codex 📖 collects every device the pupils have mastered – a handy revision sheet.

🧙 The boss battle: Warerio and the Cage of Clichés

Warerio hovers on a storm cloud above the throne room and keeps Princess Prosa in a cage with four bars – one for every riddle spell.

1. Dodge phase – Warerio lobs Dull Words (BORING, BLAND, YAWN…) at you. Every bomb shows a red warning marker where it will land; later rounds add ink waves you have to jump and double volleys.
2. Riddle spell – when the timer runs out Warerio casts a riddle: personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and a final metaphor test.
3. Strike back – a correct answer throws a golden Rhetoric Star labelled with the device, shatters one bar of the cage and hurts Warerio. A wrong answer costs a heart.
4. After the last bar the cage crashes down, the princess runs out, and Warerio plummets from his cloud. 🎉

If the hearts run out, only the current round restarts.

✏️ Adapting it (for teachers)

All the learning content lives in riddles.js – no other file needs to be touched:

• DEVICES – the codex entries (name, definition, example sentence)
• LEVEL_RIDDLES – two riddles for each of the three levels (one is chosen at random)
• BOSS_RIDDLES – the boss spells (the cage has one bar per riddle, so add or remove riddles freely)

{ device: 'simile',
  q: 'Two things sit side by side, tied together by a tiny word…<br><b>Which device am I?</b>',
  correct: 'Simile',
  wrong: ['Metaphor', 'Alliteration', 'Personification'],
  hint: 'There is a little word that builds the bridge between the two things.' }

Level layouts are defined in levels.js with a tiny builder (a.floor, a.plat, a.enemy, a.q, …). In the browser console, RE.start(3) jumps straight to the castle and RE.boss() to the boss fight. (?touch=1 on the URL previews the tablet layout on a desktop.)

🗂 Files

File	Purpose
index.html, style.css	page shell, menus, riddle dialog, codex
riddles.js	all riddles & definitions
levels.js	level builder + the four level layouts + boss arena
render.js	procedural graphics (characters, backgrounds, tiles)
game.js	physics, game flow, riddle UI, world map, boss battle, sound

All art and sound are generated in code (canvas drawing + WebAudio) – there are no image or audio files. Characters are original drawings inspired by classic platformers.