🌧️ WORD RAIN in Python

The same downpour — the falling, the matching and the levels all in Python

← Back to Fun Time
🐍 Starting Python…
Score
0
Level
1
Lives
3
Best
0

⚙️ Set it up

Start wherever you like, and race on the everyday words or on a Classical Roots lesson. Pick one book, then tick as many lessons as you want.

↑ and ↓ change it while you play

⌨️ Controls

  • Just start typing — no need to pick a word first
  • ↑ faster  •  ↓ slower — change the level whenever you like
  • BACKSPACE rub out a letter
  • SPACE give up on this word and start another
  • ENTER new game  •  ESC pause
  • 🎮 Xbox controller? Not this one, sorry — this game is about typing letters, and a controller has no letters on it. Every other game takes a pad.

🎯 How to play

  • Type a word and it vanishes. Let one touch the ground and it costs you a life.
  • You never choose a word — the letters do it for you. Type c and every word starting with c lights up.
  • The one with the line under it is the one you are on: always the lowest that still matches.
  • Three lives. Three words on the ground and the rain has won.

📈 It gets faster

  • Every six words you clear takes you up a level.
  • Each level the words fall faster and arrive closer together.
  • Too slow or too easy? Press ↑ or ↓ and change it yourself, mid-game.
  • Nobody lasts for ever. The question is how far you get.

📚 Your own word lists

  • Under the sky you can swap the everyday words for a Classical Roots lesson.
  • Pick one book, then tick as many lessons as you want.
  • Long words are given proportionally longer to fall, so a vocabulary lesson is a fair game and not an impossible one.
  • Your book, your lessons and your starting level are all remembered.

🧑‍💻 This whole game is Python

There is almost no JavaScript on this page. The browser downloaded Pyodide — a complete Python interpreter compiled to WebAssembly — and then ran the .py files in funtime/pylib/. Python does the rules, the maths and the drawing.

File What it does Good functions to try re-writing
pylib/wordfall_rules.py The rules: the falling, the matching, the levels speed_for_level, matching_word, type_letter, zap_word
pylib/wordfall_draw.py Painting the sky — Python calling the canvas draw_word, draw_ground, render_game
pylib/wordfall_web.py The glue: the keyboard, the phone keyboard, the loop do_action, on_hidden_input, frame

🔍 Compare the two versions. Open lib/wordfall-rules.js and pylib/wordfall_rules.py side by side — same ideas, two languages.

🛠️ Build it yourself: Build Word Rain in Python walks you through the functions one at a time.

⚠️ If the game never starts: the page has to read its .py files, which a browser will not do for a page opened straight off your disk. Use the live site, or run python3 -m http.server in the project folder.