An arcade game with your theme on it

Level 2: two to three weeks, real architecture. Use with: build-a-game, ship-on-github. Resume line when done: Built {project_name}, a browser arcade game — live at {url}

Brief

A one-screen arcade game on a canvas: one verb (dodge, catch, shoot, jump), a threat that speeds up the longer you survive, a score, and a death. The theme comes from your life, so the thing falling from the sky or chasing you across the screen is something you actually care about. Finished means a title menu, a game-over screen with score and restart, a high score that survives a reload, and a URL your friends can open on their own machines and lose at.

Personalize

• Your theme. Skin the classic shape with your world: your dog catching snacks, your bike dodging potholes on your actual street, your band's drummer keeping sticks in the air. If the theme could belong to anyone, pick again.
• The verb. One input scheme, chosen before any code: arrows only, arrows plus one button, or mouse only. Write it in the README and do not add a second scheme later.
• Your playtesters. Two people you can put a laptop in front of this week. Write their names in the README before you start.

Milestones

1. One-page design note in the README: the verb, the threat, what ends a run, what the score counts.
2. Canvas loop drawing the player, moving under input. Deploy this skeleton the same day.
3. The threat spawns and collision ends the run. Death does something, even if it is just a red screen.
4. Score ticks up while you live; difficulty escalates on a curve you tuned by playing it yourself, badly, many times.
5. End of week one: the full loop works, from start to death to restart, without touching reload.
6. Title menu with the game's name and the controls listed; game-over screen shows the score and a restart button.
7. High score saved in localStorage and shown on the menu.
8. Juice pass: a flash on hit, a sound on death, something that makes dying feel like an event instead of a bug.
9. Playtest round one: watch your first named tester play without coaching them. Write down every place they got confused, then fix the worst one.
10. Playtest round two with your second tester, tune the difficulty curve from what you saw, add a gif to the README, ship.

Done means

• Live URL anyone can open; the game runs smoothly on a normal laptop
• Complete loop: menu, play, die, see your score, restart, all without a page reload
• High score survives a reload
• Difficulty visibly escalates within the first 60 seconds of a run
• Both named playtesters played it, and at least one thing in the game changed because of what they did or said
• At least 15 commits across at least 10 distinct days, authored by you
• SESSIONS.md has an entry per session, written by you