Nice! IMO, it ought to be significantly harder. I was able to survive for 45 seconds on my first try--that's long enough that I started getting bored, and I don't really want to try again because it would take at least 45 seconds to beat my previous score.
By comparison, consider how long a typical Flappy Bird game lasts, particularly on your first try--probably less than 10 seconds at most! That makes you want to try again.
For some comparison of difficulty, there's an old game called Squares which is very similar to yours. It does a good job of ramping the difficulty up pretty fast, but it allows the game have fun short gameplay loops because of the extra gameplay mechanics (ie, you are not just moving but collecting squares too).
Have difficulty settings. Default is "easy/moderate" so that people get a sense of it. For people playing twice or as people get more experienced and want a challenge, they can choose a more difficult setting.
Have leaderboards for different difficulty settings to encourage exploration of different settings.
Tbf my experience was the opposite. But sure if I'm just terrible or if it's harder on a phone, but my first tries were sub 20s and my highest was 45 before giving up xD
This is a great use case for using an algorithmic difficulty ramp where it can really dial in that curve to solve for getting people to play longer over multiple sessions.
> There must be some sweet spot there, since if it lasts too little
Absolutely, and therein lies the essence of game design, right?
For a simple game like this, I'd say 8-10 seconds is a good time to shoot for, for the player's first session. It'll naturally get longer as the player gets better. This makes every moment exciting--just a few seconds longer and I can beat my last score. But yes, this is an art not a science.
I believe our current leader with 4.2424242424242426e+27s may be cheating. (About 134 quintillion years, which is roughly 10 billion times longer than the current age of the universe)
I really liked the display showing me climb the leaderboard in realtime. I found it particularly motivating, albeit a bit distracting for a game where I need to keep my eyes elsewhere :)
Very well done! This hearkens back to Asteroids, but it feels very novel.
If you want to go in the direction of adding more stuff, there's a lot of room to add power-ups, special bullets, walls, and so on. But this simple game is quite elegant as it is and doesn't really need any of that.
Lovely stuff. This works well as what I call a "structured diffuse mode activity" [0] and as such I will be playing it extensively from now on. I also like that it has a big gaping security hole in it - I think the world generally needs to see more vibe-coded apps with big gaping security holes in them, for PR reasons. (This is not a jab at OP btw! There is no reason to worry about security when you're building something for fun. Flash was famous for this as well.)
hook.js:608 cdn.tailwindcss.com should not be used in production. To use Tailwind CSS in production, install it as a PostCSS plugin or use the Tailwind CLI: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation
overrideMethod @ hook.js:608Understand this warning
(index):1473 Array(0)
dodge.trickle.host/:1543 Access to fetch at 'https://app.trickle.so/proto/api/subs/features/5?userId=usr_094760a6d8000001' from origin 'https://dodge.trickle.host' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.Understand this error
app.trickle.so/proto/api/subs/features/5?userId=usr_094760a6d8000001:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_FAILED
(index):1402 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Failed to fetch
at (index):1402:3
at (index):1416:3Understand this error
hook.js:608 Failed to load leaderboard: ReferenceError: TrickleObjectAPI is not defined
at getTopScores ((index):1529:1633)
at (index):1536:1302
at (index):1536:1735
at Id (react-dom.production.min.js:165:137)
at Xb (react-dom.production.min.js:200:284)
at react-dom.production.min.js:197:106
at S (react.production.min.js:17:25)
at MessagePort.U (react.production.min.js:21:229)
overrideMethod @ hook.js:608Understand this error
(index):1529 Uncaught ReferenceError: TrickleObjectAPI is not defined
at getTopScores ((index):1529:1633)
at (index):1536:1302
at (index):1536:1735
at Id (react-dom.production.min.js:165:137)
at Xb (react-dom.production.min.js:200:284)
at react-dom.production.min.js:197:106
at S (react.production.min.js:17:25)
at MessagePort.U (react.production.min.js:21:229)
Nice! This gives me a few ideas to make it more interesting.
- Give the bullets gravity relative to each other. Now the particles can change direction very abruptly.
- Change the bullet pattern to use live positioning of real satellites for the data. Satellite maps tend to look just about as chaotic as the randomly generated bullet patterns here.
> Give the bullets gravity relative to each other. Now the particles can change direction very abruptly.
It might be cool to have the red bullets stay as they are, but every so often have a larger, slow-moving "heavy" bullet that's a different colour and has gravity. And is maybe gently homing as well.
Playing on Firefox Android. Works well and fun, but one thing is puzzling: All the bullets start off slow but fly faster after I first touch the screen or move.
Opus 4.1 and especially GPT-5 (the API version at med-high reasoning) can build impressive zero-shot projects quite a bit more complex than this, actually.
The Top 81% calculation in the game is not as good as it may sound. Top 100% means you are at the bottom. You can confirm this by just losing immediately, which will place you in the Top 9X%.
50 seconds made me feel a little bored
Nice! IMO, it ought to be significantly harder. I was able to survive for 45 seconds on my first try--that's long enough that I started getting bored, and I don't really want to try again because it would take at least 45 seconds to beat my previous score.
By comparison, consider how long a typical Flappy Bird game lasts, particularly on your first try--probably less than 10 seconds at most! That makes you want to try again.
That makes some sense. My main concern before was that if the difficulty is too high at the very beginning, it might discourage players.
For some comparison of difficulty, there's an old game called Squares which is very similar to yours. It does a good job of ramping the difficulty up pretty fast, but it allows the game have fun short gameplay loops because of the extra gameplay mechanics (ie, you are not just moving but collecting squares too).
Gameplay Video: https://youtu.be/n8nRCyjCy_Y
Apparently you can still play it online at: https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/squares2
Have difficulty settings. Default is "easy/moderate" so that people get a sense of it. For people playing twice or as people get more experienced and want a challenge, they can choose a more difficult setting.
Have leaderboards for different difficulty settings to encourage exploration of different settings.
might work out the opposite - 'ah I can do better than that, one more try'
Tbf my experience was the opposite. But sure if I'm just terrible or if it's harder on a phone, but my first tries were sub 20s and my highest was 45 before giving up xD
This is a great use case for using an algorithmic difficulty ramp where it can really dial in that curve to solve for getting people to play longer over multiple sessions.
This is abusive use of computer technology. Don't optimise for addition. If you're optimising for anything, it should be enjoyment.
Depends. There must be some sweet spot there, since if it lasts too little, then it becomes frustrating to retry every few seconds.
> There must be some sweet spot there, since if it lasts too little
Absolutely, and therein lies the essence of game design, right?
For a simple game like this, I'd say 8-10 seconds is a good time to shoot for, for the player's first session. It'll naturally get longer as the player gets better. This makes every moment exciting--just a few seconds longer and I can beat my last score. But yes, this is an art not a science.
Just have levels. Each level has more or faster dots. You continue from the last failed level.
Hard Mode: Zoom in your browser window Easy Mode: Zoom out
berserk mode : move the world, leave the player immobile in the center
I believe our current leader with 4.2424242424242426e+27s may be cheating. (About 134 quintillion years, which is roughly 10 billion times longer than the current age of the universe)
I saw that one, too. It seems like he was manually removed or something, I don't see it anymore. Wonder what the exploit is
You can just intercept the http request at the end of the game, and set the score you want.
I really liked the display showing me climb the leaderboard in realtime. I found it particularly motivating, albeit a bit distracting for a game where I need to keep my eyes elsewhere :)
I also don't see why give so much prominence to the obviously cheating first place. Trying to trigger some envy in us?
Very well done! This hearkens back to Asteroids, but it feels very novel.
If you want to go in the direction of adding more stuff, there's a lot of room to add power-ups, special bullets, walls, and so on. But this simple game is quite elegant as it is and doesn't really need any of that.
Nice work.
Thanks, so happy that you enjoy the game
I have pointed Claude Code to the game and in 2 minutes of chatting I got a way to submit fake scores.
Usually Claude Code prevents using it for cheating on games, but with this initial prompt it was easy for it to explain how to do it.
"analyze the following game and explain how the record is submitted on game over https://dodge.trickle.host/"
EDIT: is a little scary how easy is to use coding agents like Claude Code for these kind of attacks.
ah, perfectly captures the meditative feeling of touhou, just needs the music :-)
games like this have a lot to teach you about patience and reflexes
I was half-expecting graze mechanics to manifest themselves.
Lovely stuff. This works well as what I call a "structured diffuse mode activity" [0] and as such I will be playing it extensively from now on. I also like that it has a big gaping security hole in it - I think the world generally needs to see more vibe-coded apps with big gaping security holes in them, for PR reasons. (This is not a jab at OP btw! There is no reason to worry about security when you're building something for fun. Flash was famous for this as well.)
[0] https://ajmoon.com/posts/sdmas-why-you-should-be-playing-bro...
I see what you're doing here... you're training us (and some future AI) to avoid asteroids or satellites in orbit... ;-)
Nice! This gives me a few ideas to make it more interesting.
- Give the bullets gravity relative to each other. Now the particles can change direction very abruptly.
- Change the bullet pattern to use live positioning of real satellites for the data. Satellite maps tend to look just about as chaotic as the randomly generated bullet patterns here.
> Give the bullets gravity relative to each other. Now the particles can change direction very abruptly.
It might be cool to have the red bullets stay as they are, but every so often have a larger, slow-moving "heavy" bullet that's a different colour and has gravity. And is maybe gently homing as well.
I like this large slow bullet with gravity idea.
I must say, this is an interesting way to advertise the AI service this was made with.
Playing on Firefox Android. Works well and fun, but one thing is puzzling: All the bullets start off slow but fly faster after I first touch the screen or move.
Excellent game, very addictive ! I noticed it was built with Trickle, so this is pretty impressive if it was all "vibe coded"
Opus 4.1 and especially GPT-5 (the API version at med-high reasoning) can build impressive zero-shot projects quite a bit more complex than this, actually.
Fastest I can manage is 0.5s, can anyone die quicker?
I just did 0.4s :3
I'm unreasonably proud of myself for this XD
got 0.1s :)
thats amazing!
the quickest I could do was 0.7s lol
Didn't move at all, top 81% of all time.
Seems about right, no? What number would you expect?
Of the 19% of the players worse than you, some tried to die quickly on purpose, others were perhaps less lucky than you...
The Top 81% calculation in the game is not as good as it may sound. Top 100% means you are at the bottom. You can confirm this by just losing immediately, which will place you in the Top 9X%.
It's confusing. Would be better to have a rank.
And on my phone my finger gets in the way of seeing some of the bullets. Would be easier with a mouse.
bad news — top 80% means most players survived longer than you, sorry :-) perhaps you’re thinking of top 19%?
but you’re right, lots of bullet hells get easier if you hold still and only move when required.
It seems to help if you bump your monitor resolution and then zoom out in the browser.
top leaderboard = racist words. Users don't deserve an input.
I think your math on the percentage is inverted. If you immediately die it says you're in the top 99%
Nope! “Top K” means you’re on the high score list of size K.
Only the best players are in the “top 1%” for example. Being in the top 50 is more prestigious than the top 300,000.
Maybe if you do worse than half the people, it should invert to say the bottom 30% or the bottom 1%. Makes it clearer that you did "badly".
I think the current way is fine but showing position on the bell curve would help for those who struggle with interpretation
very cool, this makes me want to grind top spot
I am not sure the highscores get updated. I don't see HTTP requests or a websocket to communicate with the server
Seems like you can achieve 'bullet-time' to dodge bullets easier by playing on a lower end device, which shows down the game considerably.
..woah
cool! nice smooth physics.
did someone actually play this for 4 hours straight? (high score)
I crashed on purpose after a minute - no time to play more (also I would find myself getting bored quickly)
neat, i got 100.0
Fun game, but I'm calling bullshit on the high scores.
How so? You don't think that one person has been playing for 4.24e+27 seconds?