Scaling Everest: A Videogame Created for an English Assignment

Tue, Nov 16, 2010
1mo ago
2m read

	Timeline:	Nov 13-15, 2010
	Languages Used:	Game Maker Language (GML)
	School:	School of Engineering & Biomedical Science (SEBS)
	Course:	English 2 (Sophomore Year)

Watch the Demo

The Assignment

In the fall of my sophomore year at SEBS, our English 2 class was given an assignment: make a creative project inspired by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s legendary 1953 ascent of Mount Everest.

Most of my classmates wrote an essay. I asked Mrs. Trujillo if a videogame would count for credit. She said yes (shout out to Mrs. Trujillo for being awesome), and so began one of my most frantic and memorable weekend projects.

Building a Mountain (in Code)

With just a few days to make something worth presenting to the class, I locked myself in my room and set out to build a game in Game Maker that would capture the spirit of the climb.

The result: Scaling Everest, a platformer where you play as Hillary and Norgay, dodging avalanches, braving the cold, and making your way to the summit. The graphics were… let’s call them “retro” (read: MS Paint chic), and the gameplay was simple, but it was mine.

I wish I could share the source code, but somewhere between high school and adulthood, it vanished into the digital ether. All that’s left is the original Windows executable.

💡 Tip
If you’re on Mac or Linux, use Wine to run it!

Download .exe

Reflections

Looking back, Scaling Everest was less about the code and more about the climb—both Norgay’s/Hillary’s and my own. It was the first time I convinced a teacher that a videogame could be art, and the first time I convinced my friend Jacquelyn to star in a videogame.

✅ Certified Mountain Climber
Although it wasn’t Everest, 14 years later, Jacquelyn actually went on to complete one of the most notoriously difficult mountain summits in the world: Mount Kilimanjaro! Call it destiny, perhaps.

If you play the game, let me know if you make it to the top.