Fans and followers of the twisted, head haunting comic XKCD, created by Randall Munroe, now have an exciting game called 'Hoverboard' with which to kill times. It seems like its a small game, but if you start digging into it, it's addictive, intelligent and there's lots to explore.

The game, critics say, is both massive and mysterious. Players are just unearthing its gems. Munroe has come up with a playable narrative that is complicated and layered and Munro fans are hammering away at the game to get to understand its nuances.

And nuances there be always for Munroe's work, a potpourri of existential questions and comments on life combined with scientific notions and mathematical wizardry interpreted by the now famous cast of stick figured.

Fans playing Hoverboard are saying that the story of Hoverboard is as cool as Munroe's graphic tale, the Hugo-award-winning Time. And, of course, know that the game itself has been released to commemorate the release of Munroe's brilliant new book, Thing Explainer, according to Boing Boing.

explainxkcd.com has important information for those who want to try out or get immersed in Hoverboard on its wiki. Here is an overview:

"The game was made by Max Goodman who has previously worked on 1416: Pixels. The game features Cueball on a hover board in an arena filled with coins, initially it appears the aim of the game is to collect all the coins. However, a seemingly intentional bug in the game means that the player can jump and keep jumping forever without needing to land. This allows the character to go out of bounds of the "Play Area" prompting multiple warnings insisting the player returns to said "Play Area".

But exiting this area reveals a hidden world similar in style to the previous comic 1110: Click and Drag, which can be explored by navigating through various obstacles and hidden areas. There are 17 coins in the "Play Area" and a grand total of 169 in the entire game.

Escaping from the starting area is quite simple, the character simply has to navigate through one of the multiple holes in the area and them simply jump over the wall on the left or the right of the starting area, this can be done by repeatedly tapping the jump key. The player can then explore.

The game is physically bounded in the left and the right direction, but is technically unbounded upwards and downwards, however, past a certain point there appears to be nothing interesting in the up or down direction. It could be possible that some unexplored hole leads deeper into the map than has been found so far.

Notable features include a number of large ships in the sky, with various interiors which can be entered from several places. To find them, follow the strings which several characters are holding near the first ground area.

West: Washington Monument - Volcano - Lava pools - LOTR Eagles - Elon Musk's Volcano Lair - Landing re-entry capsule - Giant spaceship / Floating rock island in the sky (x: 507163, y: -567537) Hat underground A hole which traps(?) the player unless noclip mode is used

East: Wedding - Giant bird nest - Desert - Ocean Yelper - Graveyard - Talking Rogue Wave - People holding anchor lines to a Star Destroyer, among other ships.

The controls for the game are simple:

  • Go Left - Left arrow key, a or h
  • Go Right - Right arrow key, d or l
  • Go Up (jump or hover) - Up arrow key, w, or k

If you would like to see how to play the game, watch the video here.