Design notes
How we make these games: the trade-offs behind the rules, the feel, the art and the sound.
Designing Inkloop: loops, cuts and seals
Why the only way to die in Inkloop is to be enclosed, why cutting never kills, how the bots are tuned to feel human, and what changed after simulation.
Game sound with no audio files
Inkloop, Meme Brawl and Runekeep ship no audio files. Every effect and song is synthesized live with the Web Audio API. Here is how, and what it costs.
How Runekeep turns typing practice into tower defence
Inside Runekeep's code: how targets lock, how difficulty ramps, why Letter Trial drills one row at a time, and how WPM and accuracy are counted.
How we manage pixel assets without image files
Meme Brawl and Runekeep ship without a single image file. How their sprites are written as text, compiled to canvases, outlined, recoloured and scaled.
Making io games without servers
How Inkloop runs entirely offline in the browser: bots in place of other players, plain JavaScript and Canvas 2D, a fixed 60 Hz loop, and how we test it.
What makes a hit land in Meme Brawl
Reading Meme Brawl's source to see how hit-stop, screen shake, juggle decay, combo buffers, attack tokens and boss stagger make its hits feel good.