Great Fire of London

David rebuilt London Museum's Great Fire of London game from Flash to HTML5 in 2015, preserving all of its content for tablets and modern browsers.

Summary

The project: London Museum's Great Fire of London game was built in Adobe Flash, which had never run on tablets and was being phased out of browsers.
David's role: In 2015, as the sole developer at Fish in a Bottle, David rebuilt the game from scratch in HTML5 and JavaScript, using the original as the reference for every interaction.
The result: All of the content preserved and playable on tablets, Chromebooks and modern browsers. The rebuild is still live more than ten years later.

In brief

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Overview

Timeline: 2015
Migration: Adobe Flash to HTML5 (Rebuilt from scratch)
Genre: Educational
Engagement: Legacy Modernisation

Built with

HTML5
JavaScript

Team

David EdgecombeDeveloper

The Great Fire of London game is an illustrated educational game that takes children through the events of 1666, with a day-by-day story, characters to meet, historical artefacts and hands-on mini-games. It was built in Adobe Flash.

By 2015 that was becoming a serious problem. Flash had never run on tablets, which schools were adopting quickly, and browsers were starting to phase it out. London Museum needed the game rebuilt for the modern web without losing any of its content.

As the sole developer on the project at Fish in a Bottle, David rebuilt the game from scratch in HTML5 and JavaScript using CreateJS, with the original Flash game as the reference for every interaction, animation and win condition. Some of the original artwork was reused, and Fish in a Bottle artist Scott rebuilt the lower-resolution assets.

More than ten years later, the HTML5 version is still live. For the detail of how it was rebuilt, read the Great Fire of London case study.

Gallery

Title artwork of a man in a tall hat and a boy carrying a leaking bucket through a burning street

Story scene of Jane the maid looking out of a window, with the day tabs and scene icons below

Mini-game where the player throws buckets of water at a row of burning houses

Pop-up with a photograph and description of a bucket from 1666 found on Pudding Lane

Story scene of Samuel Pepys and Jane in a garden beside buried bottles and cheese, with London burning behind them

Mini-game where the player chooses which firefighting equipment to load into Tom's cart

Case Studies

Fire Of London

Rebuilding a Museum Flash Game for Modern Browsers

How David rebuilt London Museum's Great Fire of London game from Flash to HTML5, keeping all its content and bringing it to tablets.

Read Case Study

David's Contributions

Rebuilt From Scratch

David rebuilt the game in HTML5 and JavaScript with CreateJS, using the original Flash game as the reference for every interaction, animation and win condition.