WhizzBall! is a classic online puzzle-game from the early 2000's created by Andries Odendaal for the original Discovery Kids website. Many children and adults alike enjoyed playing, with its combination of challenging user-created puzzles and its inherent social aspect.
Eventually, the game was shutdown. An archived version of the game could still be found on archive.org, but without the online server that handled accounts and puzzle sharing, the game was left essentially unplayable.
That's where this project comes in! As a game developer who enjoyed playing the game as a kid, I wanted to see if I could get the game back up and running again. This required having game connect to a basic PHP & MySQL based server, designed to mimic the behavior the game expected from the original. In fact, the game client files (.swf's) themselves required no modification.
The most recent change came with the Flash player being discontinued in 2020. To keep the game running, the Ruffle project comes to the rescue! There are a couple of minor issues, such as the username not displaying correctly in the menu, but otherwise everything seems to work well enough.
Having fun playing the game? Want to chat with other players like you? Come join our community Discord server!
If you'd like to help support my ability to keep the game running & properly maintained, consider supporting the work my brothers and I do together at our small indie game development studio over on Patreon!
WhizzBall! is intellectual property of Discovery, Inc., and/or Andries Odendaal, and/or any sub-contractors, individuals, or entites to whom these rights were transfered. This project is not intended to infringe on their respective rights, but simply to preserve their work for archival purposes.