A couple months ago I felt like it was time to check in again on the state of web game development and to my surprise found a powerful new (new to me at least) open source framework in phaser.io. It had been probably 10 years since I've done any web game development and previously I had just built my own engine to manipulate HTML canvas and let me say Phaser is SO much easier, wow. It's almost like real game development, almost.
All at once I had an idea about a near-future where a group of rebels captures a supercarrier from a corrupt government, not to fight, but to run away forever. Things don't go exactly as they planned however.
It took about a month off and on, but I've built a version of that vision in my new game (a short scenario really) called The Assurant. You can play it by clicking on the link easily.
Art
I made all the art/backgrounds/sprites myself, which maybe wasn't a great idea considering I'm not in any way a visual artist, but to be honest I had so much fun creating them! The ships and explosions were super interesting to experiment with and I learned a lot about how to animate at 30fps. Everything was done in Photoshop.
In future projects I'd probably want to partner with, you know, an actual artist to expand upon my frankly placeholder graphics. That being said I think the ships and backgrounds are cute aha.
Sound
I ripped all of the sounds and music from royalty-free YouTube videos. It's crazy how much good stuff is out there.
I did find the Phaser 3 sound engine to be a bit lacking, especially considering that you can only have one instance of it active at once, which makes having a soundtrack + sound effects a little funky when you're using spacial audio.
Weapons
I love the weapons and the fact that they are either on or off and target acquisition happens automatically. I'm especially proud of the CIWS (close in weapon system) that shoots at and blows up torpedos from enemy destroyers (as long as it has ammo left). I had to figure out actual basic physics to do target interception, which was huge for me because I hate math.
The Fighters
You hold "f" to launch your fighters. I'll be honest they don't do much aside from maybe to buy you a couple more seconds, but you will need all the margin you can get in order to close the distance with the enemy super carrier. Honestly launch them as soon as you can.
One cool thing is how the fighters do a cool little flip when they have to change their X axis during thrusting. It was a pain to figure out without them bugging out all over the place.
How do you win?
There is only one way to win and there is a trick to winning. It's not a fair fight with the UEP and you'll never win by trying to outmaneuver and battle their ships. Spoiler alert: figuring out the mechanics to delaying your engine room conundrum is key.
Canonically, when you win it's an accident. Don't worry though back on Earth they'll think you (spoiler) blew up yourselves to bring down the UEP, not because you ran away from Earth and made a panicked decision at the last second.
What's next?
I think next I should learn Godot and begin work on a more in depth version of a game like this. Phaser 3 was great to reengag with game dev, but I'd love to develop for systems other than web.
For a more advanced game, I was thinking Kingdom: Two Crowns meets Airships: Conquer the Skies. That feels like a very fun, rather unexplored formula to me.
Basically you'd pilot a single ship and slowly build a settlement beneath/around you on a planet while doing wave defense. Opposed to Kingdom though, I think it would be funny to make the ship extremely complicated to pilot, giving you fine grain control over ship systems, escort fighters, and weapons. All the while the settlement around you grows more or less organically without your input as long as its kept safe.
There would then be a star map with like 5 systems that get progressively harder with weirder aliens, enemies, flora, etc.
I don't know if I'd want to allow editing of the ship itself like Airships. I kind of like having a static shell, but you can upgrade the modules in a particular direction using some kind of resource that you get from defeating enemy ships and colony industry that you have to fly around and collect.
I just think it would be super fun to have to press a million keys to pilot this super ship and have the skill ceiling be super high with a million things that could go wrong - or right! Almost like a high-technology QWOP.
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