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Girder-climb platform rounds

Pro packv3.0.0-12DArcade

A single-screen climbing platformer: run up sloping girders and ladders while barrels roll down at you, grab a hammer, ride lifts and pull rivets. The four classic stages are a preset, and their builders, enemy kinds and tables are all exported to remix.

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Released October 19, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

Girder-climb platform rounds: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

This pack is data and builders for the platform-rounds session, which runs the stages on the platform mechanic packs. The four stages come from the original arcade game's layout tables. On the girders stage the ape at the top throws barrels that roll down the slopes, sometimes taking a ladder towards the player; every so often a wild barrel bounces straight down through the girders, and blue barrels light the oil drum and become fires. The conveyor stage has four belts that switch direction, pies riding them and ladders that retract. The lift stage has a rising and a falling column of lifts and springs that bounce in from the top. The rivets stage has eight rivets to pull and fireballs that appear on the far side of the screen.

The hero moves as in the arcade: a fixed jump, no jumping from ladders or catching one mid-air, broken ladders that stop short of the girder above, and death from a fall of more than a short drop. A hammer smashes barrels, fires and pies for a while but stops the hero jumping or climbing. Jumping barrels and fires scores, as do hammer smashes, the items to collect and the rivets, and the bonus timer counts down to a death at zero, paying out what is left on a clear.

Underneath, an internal difficulty climbs with the level and with time spent on an attempt, and steers how often barrels take ladders, where wild barrels aim, how fast fires move and how often new ones appear. The stage order can follow either of the two arcade orders or a list of your own.

Features

  • Four stage builders — girders, conveyors, lifts and rivets, from the original layout tables, as dkGirdersStage, dkConveyorsStage, dkElevatorsStage and dkRivetsStage.
  • Barrels — rolling, wild and blue, with throw rates, wild chance, blue frequency and ladder-taking gated by difficulty.
  • Fires, pies and springs — fires from the oil drum, pies on belts that burn in the fire, and springs that bounce across and drop down the lift column.
  • Hammers — a set duration, smash scores and a pause on each smash that you can tune.
  • Arcade movement — fixed jumps, ladder rules, broken ladders and fatal falls, with house rules to relax them.
  • The bonus timer — counted by level, dropping per barrel on the first stage and by time elsewhere.
  • Internal difficulty — rising with level and attempt time, as dkInternalDifficulty.
  • Two stage orders — the US and Japanese sequences, or any list of your own.
  • Exported parts — the layout tables, line conversion for girder maps, enemy kinds and score tables.

Good for

  • Girder-climbing platformers in the style of Donkey Kong, with barrels, ladders, hammers and rivets.
  • A single stage of your own, such as a girder level with rolling barrels or a conveyor stage with pies.
  • Friendlier versions with house rules that let the hero jump off ladders, catch them mid-air or jump with the hammer.
  • Remixed stage orders and retuned barrel rates for a harder or shorter run.

Make it yours

donkeyKongPreset takes the stage order (us, japan or your own lists), lives, extra life, difficulty, whether to play the height interlude before each attempt and the opening intro, hammer time, the smash pause, the most fires and barrels, the throw interval, wild chance, blue barrel frequency, the bonus, lift speed, the fatal fall height, the rivet score and house rules. The house rules, all off by default as in the arcade, allow jumping off ladders, catching ladders in the air, climbing broken ladders up to the girder above and jumping with the hammer. dkLines turns a layout table into girder, ladder and solid lines for platform-map's girderMap, so a new stage is new data on the same kinds.

Two different games from one pack: the arcade run, in the US order with its strict movement and three lives; and a gentler version in the Japanese order with five lives, a normal difficulty preset and ladder jumping allowed, or a girder stage of your own built from the same parts with a different barrel rate.

A quick look

The Japanese stage order with five lives and a house rule, and a girder table turned into lines:

const PR = game.platformRounds, DK = game.girderClimb;
const rounds = PR.createRounds(DK.donkeyKongPreset({ order: "japan", lives: 5, difficulty: PR.difficultyPreset("normal"), houseRules: { ladderJump: true } }));
rounds.start();
const lines = DK.dkLines(DK.DK_TABLES.girders);

Works with

Good to know

  • The captive at the top sits at a fixed spot, and the cut-scenes are timed interludes for your presenter to animate.
  • One player; two-player alternation and the attract-mode demo are not modelled.
  • Some behaviours are averaged or estimated, such as the throw window, barrel steering and wild-barrel bounces, and retracting ladders move by whole cells rather than pixel by pixel.
  • A few small arcade details, such as one fire variant and some invisible blockers, are left out.

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