Welcome to my latest project, Litterbug! In this game, you’ll take on the role of a trash collector in a bustling city, racing against time to pick up as much garbage as possible. But be warned – litterbugs are out in force, trying to snatch up as much trash as they can. This Phaser-based game is inspired by a classic Commodore 64 game of the same name.
Commodore Version
This game inspired by a game written by Paul Choquette, published in November 1987’s COMPUTE!’s Gazette, an excellent computer magazine from the 1980s. The majority of the code is written in machine language, so there’s really no comparison to the Phaser code.
Phasers Set To Stun
Originally, I was considering Unity and C# for the game. However, I found the build complexity often wasn’t worthwhile for simple games. In cases like this, Javascript is often a better fit. For the remake, I considered a few libraries and eventually settled on Phaser. The library decently balances functionality and simplicity. I found it was fairly easy to get most things up and running.
There are also a number of plugins and other libraries that are available. For this project, I stuck with just the core library. I did look at various external resources for the image and sound assets.
Gameplay Rules
- You are a trash collector in a busy city, and your goal is to collect as much garbage as possible before the timer runs out.
- Use the arrow keys to move your character around the city and collect garbage by walking over it.
- Be careful, though! Litterbugs are also roaming the streets, and they will try to steal the garbage from you. If a litterbug touches you while you’re carrying garbage, they will take it away from you and lower your score.
- The more garbage you collect, the higher your score will be. So keep moving, keep collecting, and watch out for those pesky litterbugs!
This game is a work-in-progress, and so these rules may change.
Repository
The github repository is available at https://github.com/revnoah/litterbug