Simple Games: Space Invaders

Over the last few weeks I've been explaining to my 8 year old son, Peter, how games are made and we have done a few experiments.

I've always liked the idea of games in the web browser and ever since I saw Scott Porter's "gamelib" javascript library back in 2004 or so I've been determined to see what I could do.

You don't need any sophisticated software to run or write the games and they can be played by everyone on any machine.

First off we made a very, very simple space invaders game. It has no real graphics but demonstrates a gameloop and some simple game principles.

You can play it here. Use < to move left, > to move right and spacebar to fire. To win the game you need to score 3000 points. If the spaceship gets to the bottom of the screen you loose a life. After 3 lives are lost the game ends. Right click the game and select "view source" if you are interested in what makes it tick!