ZAPZIPZAP

ZAPZIPZAP is a free browser game by SebZanardo, who publishes on itch.io as ZEN, with sound by huthuthunter (Hunter Starr). It was made in May 2025 for the Playmakers May Game Jam with raylib, and drawn in the purple, blue and yellow-green palette of a Commodore 64 with chunky pixel lettering. Its source code is public on GitHub.

The playfield is a maze built from diagonal slashes, some leaning forward and some backward, like the classic 10 PRINT pattern. You move only on the diagonals, and each move zips you along a corridor until a slash stops you. You start with eight zaps, shown as lightning bolts down the right edge: moving into a wall spends one and breaks through it, and the yellow dots scattered over the maze give zaps back. You may never cross your own trail, so the run ends when you have boxed yourself in with no zaps left.

The maze comes from a seed that is simply the number of days since the game came out, so everyone who plays on the same UTC day gets the same layout. The title screen shows today's seed and a countdown to the next one. Puzzle mode, marked with a jigsaw piece, lets you take your time and score by how far you get. Action mode, marked with a stopwatch, scrolls the screen under you, adds a bonus for every dot you collect, and ends if you are pushed off the edge. Each mode keeps its own best score in your browser; there is no online leaderboard.

It plays with the arrow keys, WASD or QZOM on a computer, and with swipes and taps on a phone or tablet. It suits players who like short retro arcade runs and a fresh layout to plan around each day.