For a while now I’ve been wanting to start writing JavaScript/HTML5 based games for the web. I’ve always been drawn to simple games like the old Asteroids and Galaga where you have a ship and a bunch of bad stuff trying to destroy you. They’re easy to learn, play and waste your time with and yes, they give you that easy, addictive sense that you are actually accomplishing something worthwhile when you break your high score by one point.
One of the coolest modern versions of these old arcade classics is actually kind of useful. Ztype is a simple shooter game along the lines of Galaga but you are shooting words and you have to type them in correctly or your ship doesn’t shoot. It’s an addictive game with great graphics and sounds.
But I needed something simpler to get me started and familiar with the game engine I had chosen to start with – Phaser. I found an amazing tutorial on how to re-build Asteroids over on zekechan.net. It is surprisingly straightforward, provides full code to check yours against, is easy to follow but goes in depth enough to take you through developing an entire game.
However, by the time I was finished building the game, I was a little bored with the idea of a ship trying to destroy asteroids so I switched it up a bit to include a political theme appropriate for the current presidential race. You can check it out at http://ryanrandom.com/ted .
EDIT 2020: I’ve long moved on from ryanrandom.com so the game above is no longer active.