Yellicopter is a twist on the classic helicopter game from days past. Instead of holding down the mouse or a key to fly, instead you open your mouth and let out a shout. If you yell loud enough, the helicopter will fly, and when you stop yelling it will drop. Master your vocal control to avoid the obstacles and set a new high score.
Yellicopter was hacked together from an existing open source version of the classic helicopter game, made by Dale Harvey, and the relatively new web audio capabilities of HTML5. In making Yellicopter, I wanted to take a different approach to how the player interacted with a familiar game. First and foremost, I wanted the game to be fun. And what is more fun than yelling at your computer screen during finals week? Yelling also forces the player to be patient with themselves. If you respond to a crash by screaming expletives, as some are want to do, the game will interpret your yelling as a command to restart and you will find your copter heading immediately towards failure. Ultimately success in the game comes from self control. If you know when to make noise and when to be quiet, you will make it farther than everyone else.
Yellicopter can be played at http://rosemary.umw.edu/~rkinsman/yellicopter/index.html. As of this writing, audio input has only been tested using chrome and a mac. In order to use the voice controls, you’ll have to go to chrome://flags and enable web audio. Once you’ve done this and relaunched your browser, simply press ‘use live input’ at the top of the game and allow the browser access to your microphone. Then start yelling! If you are too quiet for too long your browser might cut you off from your microphone, so try pressing ‘use live input’ again if your copter loses its voice.