How do I control the character?

Players play Ava narrative modules by controlling the movement of Ava within her environment. Generally, she can run, jump, and use her grappling hook. She can also interact with her environment, gain or lose fortitude, and craft environments.

If the platforming gameplay is too difficult for a player, it is possible to change the difficulty settings. Find out more here. Note that this does NOT impact any of the story content or difficulty of the SEL material.

If the player is extremely stuck with a physical obstacle in the game, the counselor menu can used to skip that section. Find out more here.

Platforming Mode

On a computer, here are her basic moves:

• Move left or right with the A or D keys, or the left and right arrow keys. These are both sets of directional keys.

• Jump with the space bar

  💡 If you hold left or right while jumping, Ava will jump that direction

• Point at the screen with a mouse and click for Ava to shoot her hook. Her hook only has a certain distance it can shoot, indicated by the red hook reticle on screen. When you point outside of that distance, the little red dot will halt at its furthest point. You can shoot it twice before needing to reload by touching the ground or a wall.

Hook with two shots left

Hook with one shot left

Hook with no shots left

• Press the ‘F’ key to interact with the environment, when prompted. This can be used to talk to characters, go through doorways, and more. Learn more about what sort of interactables exist in the games below.

• Pick up floating collectables like coins or gems by running Ava’s hook or body into them.

  

  Gem

  

  Coin

Ava can do a few more complex movements, as well:

• Ava can shoot her hook when she’s mid air/jumping
• Ava can cling to walls by holding down a directional key

• Ava can wall jump by pressing space while she’s against a wall
  • Press space multiple times (without holding a directional button) to wall jump rapidly back and forth between two walls, quickly scaling them!

Ava can also gain and lose fortitude (similar to ‘health’ in other video games). Her level of fortitude is tracked in the upper left hand corner of the screen so the player knows when they need to recharge it. There are five available fortitude slots.

Similar to other games, Ava can lose fortitude when she falls into a chasm, touches spikes, or falls too great a distance. Unique to our games, she can also take damage from sounds that are too loud, like from the Adbots in our Trust module. After she loses one slot of fortitude, she is automatically teleported to a nearby checkpoint, so the player can try the challenge again.

When Ava is running low on fortitude, she can visit a quiet space to recharge it. Read the What can Ava interact with in her environment? article for more information on environmental obstacles and quiet spaces.

The first time all five of Ava’s fortitude slots are depleted, she enters a shutdown sequence, which resembles our dialogue sequence. In this scene, Ava’s pirate crew captain, Redbraid, coaches Ava on taking a break and deep breaths so she can re-center and calm down. Once the sequence is completed, the player is given an opportunity to try the challenge again.

💡 The shutdown sequence will only play the first time Ava loses all her fortitude. If she reaches full depletion of fortitude more than once, the character will simply restart at the last quiet space Ava visited, and skip the shutdown sequence.

Ava in the shutdown sequence. This is meant to convey the autistic experience of being overwhelmed and experiencing a shutdown.

Crafting Mode

Finally, Ava can enter crafting mode. She can only access this mode in the ‘Needs’ module and in World Builder.

On the computer, access the crafting mode by clicking on the hammer icon in the bottom left hand corner, or by hitting the ‘B’ button.

• In World Builder, the player can enter build mode at any time
• In the ‘Needs’ module, the player can only enter build mode in build zones. The hammer icon will appear in these zones, and disappear when the player leaves. Build benches sit next to build zones. When the player stands in front of a build bench, they can press ‘B’ to enter the building screen.

When the player enters this mode, the screen will change into the building screen, which gives Ava a whole new range of tools. These tools let the player place, move, rotate, flip, and delete objects on screen. They can also click ‘clear all’ to remove every block and object within the building space. On the right side of the menu, they can zoom the screen in and out, save their creation, or exit to the main menu.

The types of objects you can place fall into three categories:

• Blocks - square blocks of terrain (similar to Minecraft blocks), such as bricks, dirt, sand, and glass. Ava can platform on these.

  

• Characters - characters that Ava has encountered in the narrative modules can also be placed in the world.

💡 Try using the speech bubble and emoji objects to have the characters tell a story!

• Objects - objects such as tables, plants, bookshelves posters, and other decorations. With a few exceptions, Ava cannot platform on these.

  

The object menu icon on the left, and the block menu Icon on the right

When the player is done building, and wants to use Ava to platform again, they hit the ‘Play’ button in the bottom left corner: