> Screens
> Overview
Dino Dash is a side-on physics racer for kids, and a test of how far a small web game can go on the browser game portals. You drive a dinosaur-shaped car over hills, through loops and across lava, collecting eggs and coins and trying to beat the clock for three stars. Nobody dies: flip over and you are straight back on your wheels, fall in lava and you go back to a checkpoint.
> What is in it
- 20 levels built from thirteen kinds of section: loops, ponds, waterfalls, geysers, rope bridges, rock walls and more
- Hazards that arrive as you progress: lava bombs from erupting volcanoes, stampedes that chase you down the track
- 9 dinos unlocked by eggs found, each with its own trick. Ankylo smashes rock walls, Ptero glides, Spino is fast in water
- A garage with engine, tyre, suspension and nitro upgrades, paint jobs and wheel styles
- Ghost runs of your best time, slow motion over the finish line, big air call-outs
> How it is built
Around 3,700 lines of plain JavaScript drawing to a canvas, with planck.js for the physics and nothing else from outside. Every graphic, texture, sound effect and piece of music is made in code at start-up, so the whole game is about half a megabyte and runs straight from the file.
The part I like most is the testing. A robot driver plays every level with every dino at full gas and reports where it got stuck, which loops it skipped and which eggs are off the racing line. Its times set the star targets, so when I change a level the difficulty updates itself.
> Status
Feature complete. Next is play-testing with the real target audience, aged three and six, before submitting it to a games portal.