evader
evader is a minimal game about evading oncoming obstacles in a constricted area. You can play the game -- here. Hope you have fun!
History and Motivation
evader started its journey as an educational aid, to teach module-oriented interactive UI architecture; over the course of its development, it became its own thing. Going even further back in time...
Sometime around 1999-2001, someone created a minimal game called Escapa using the WYSIWYG web page maker called Microsoft Frontpage. The time of its origin is a pure guess based on the Frontpage's version present in a meta tag in the game's HTML.
The game found its way to me in 2010, via an email chain with an urban legend-esque story, that it was used by US Air Force pilots to train their focus. I had a lot of fun playing the game then, and competing with my friends for the best scores. Following is a screenshot of an instance of Escapa.
Cut to present day (2021) -- I am demonstrating the architectural principles of writing modular and interactive client-facing software using Vanilla JavaScript to a few frontend juniors in the company that I work at.
In our case, this is an interactive client which talks to smart telemed devices, and displays metrics -- vitals, and such -- in realtime (these metrics are further relayed to a remote doctor).
Unfortunately that codebase is closed-source, and there was a lot of friction in sharing it as an example even with other groups in the company, who could have definitely benefited from such a resource.
...and then, I remembered Escapa. The plan was to rewrite it using above principles, and have it on display for whoever was interested. That's how evader was born.
As I've mentioned previously, over time evader turned into its own thing. Along with the improved aesthetics and the structured codebase, it has new game mechanics -- two different game modes; a game randomiser (enemy positions, and speeds); and additional bells and whistles -- locally-persisted stats, audio/visual themes, etc...
Acknowledgements
I would be amiss if I didn't mention the people, and resources whose help has been invaluable in building evader.
I am thankful to Nikhil Astakala and Sai Somanath Komanduri for their inputs on certain game mechanics, and for being such ardent testers of the game.
The game's aesthetic value is majorly because of
- the emojis, designed by Facebook;
- the ethereal soundtrack, composed by Chris Zabriskie;
- the sound effects from freesound.org.
A complete list of the exact sounds assets used (along with their source), can be found inside the LICENSE file.
Thanks are also due to Sirish Satyavolu for his feedback on the game SFX; and to Joshua Matthew, Bhargavi Komanduri, and Srinivas Gunti for their motivation, and for testing the game.
Thank you for reading! The process of creating evader was a joy, and I sincerely hope that you get to derive something nice out of this.