game-playbook

name

game-playbook

description

The end-to-end recipe for building a GREAT browser game from a one-line idea, plus the craft checklist that separates a tech demo from something fun. Use when the user says 'make a game', 'build a <genre> game' ('make a pixel art top-down slasher', 'build a platformer', 'make a shooter'), 'create a game', or asks to make a game better: 'it feels flat/static/boring', 'add polish/craft', 'screen shake', 'hit stop', 'make it feel good', 'why does my game feel cheap'.

Crafting a great game

The platform promise is "studio-grade games from a prompt." The gap between a tech demo and that is two things: the right build order and craft. This skill is the playbook. The engine/asset/deploy skills own the pieces; this owns how they fit together and how to make the result fun.

The recipe (a complete game from "make a game")

Do these in order — don't write the game loop before you have art, and don't ship before the craft pass.

1. Scaffold. vg new <slug> --engine phaser for 2D, --engine threejs for 3D. (See the phaser / threejs skills.) The template is a skeleton, not a game — you will replace its placeholder scene and logo.
2. Generate the art FIRST (see pixel-art). Order matters:
   • hero character → directional walk sheets (walk-down/up/side, left = mirror) → background-remove (Bria) → normalize to exact power-of-two frames.
   • enemies / pickups / projectiles.
   • impact + ability VFX on PURE BLACK (slash arcs, explosions, muzzle flashes) — render them with BlendModes.ADD so black is free transparency, no alpha pass needed. A generated video → ffmpeg frame strip makes great fire/explosion (see pixel-art Recipe 5).
   • ground/tiles or a parallax/arena backdrop. Replace the template's logo/bg — never ship placeholder art.
3. Core loop with the proven shell (see phaser): full-screen Scale.RESIZE, a zoom-aware follow camera (clamp the centre yourself — Phaser's setBounds reveals void), directional applyAnim(dir, moving), Arcade physics for movement + overlap hit detection, load.spritesheet with the EXACT frame dims you normalized to.
4. Craft pass — the checklist below. This is what makes it great.
5. Verify it's actually fun. Run it (see playwright / run), play it — move, attack, take a hit, die, restart. A game that only "looks done" in a static screenshot usually feels dead in motion. Tune speeds/cooldowns/spawn rates until the core loop is satisfying in the first 10 seconds.
6. Ship. vg deploy ./dist (see deploy); add multiplayer / add touch controls / make it forkable are one prompt each (see multiplayer, gamepad, fork). Link-shared games get opened on phones — if the game is mouse/keyboard-only, add on-screen touch controls so it's playable there.

The craft checklist

Apply most of these to every interactive moment (hit, kill, pickup, jump, land, damage). Each is a few lines; together they're the whole difference.

• Screen shake on impact: this.cameras.main.shake(80, 0.005) (bigger for player damage, smaller for a hit landed).
• Hit-stop on meaningful hits — freeze for a beat so blows land: this.physics.world.pause(); this.time.delayedCall(45, () => this.physics.world.resume());
• Knockback: shove the target away from the source on hit (body.setVelocity(cos*K, sin*K)), and ignore AI steering for ~150ms so the knockback reads.
• Particles on hit/kill/pickup — a soft additive burst:

  const e = this.add.particles(x, y, "spark", {
    speed: { min: 50, max: 220 },
    lifespan: { min: 240, max: 520 },
    scale: { start: 1, end: 0 },
    alpha: { start: 1, end: 0 },
    tint,
    blendMode: Phaser.BlendModes.ADD,
    emitting: false,
  });
  e.explode(14);
  this.time.delayedCall(650, () => e.destroy());
  

  (Generate a soft white dot texture procedurally in the preloader.)
• Hit flash: sprite.setTint(0xffffff).setTintMode(Phaser.TintModes.FILL) for ~80ms (Phaser 4 — setTintFill is gone).
• Squash & stretch / pop-in: spawn enemies/pickups with a Back.Out scale tween from ~0.4; a brief non-uniform scale on attack/land sells weight.
• Ability VFX: the additive-on-black slash/explosion sprite, swung via a scale↑ + alpha→0 tween in the facing direction.
• Screen flash on player damage: this.cameras.main.flash(120, 120, 20, 30).
• Camera: follow the player (zoom-aware clamp) and zoom in enough that the hero and enemies read BIG — a too-wide camera makes everything feel small and floaty. Show ~9–12 character-heights tall.
• Easing everywhere: tween with Sine/Quad/Back/Cubic, never linear pops.
• Sound (optional but huge): generate SFX/music with vg generate (audio models) — a hit thwack, a death pop, a loop — and play on the same events.
• Readable HUD: monospace/tabular numbers, hearts for HP, a clear win/lose banner. Surface connection state for multiplayer.

Anti-patterns (what makes a game feel cheap)

• Shipping the template's placeholder scene/logo instead of generated art.
• Movement with no feedback — no shake, no particles, no knockback, no flash. Functionally correct, feels dead.
• A fixed tiny canvas or a too-wide camera — the action feels small. Go full-screen with a tight follow camera.
• Loading AI sprite sheets without exact frame dims (jitter/garbage frames) — normalize to power-of-two cells first (pixel-art, asset-pipeline).
• Linear tweens and instant state changes — no anticipation or follow-through.
• Judging "done" from a static screenshot. Play it in motion before shipping.

Deep modules

This playbook is the index; when a step needs real depth, load the module:

• ask-me — the idea is fuzzy; interview the user into a build-ready spec.
• game-feel — tuning numbers for input forgiveness, movement, hit stop, trauma shake, audio feel. The craft checklist above is the summary; that's the reference.
• animation — sprite animation craft: frame budgets, attack timing, cancel windows, smears, silhouette readability.
• vfx — particle recipes (explosions, sparks, trails, weather), color rules, mobile performance budgets.
• level-design — level/wave/arena structure: kishōtenketsu beats, weenies, experiential density, wave grammar, difficulty sawtooth.
• onboarding — the first 30 seconds, teaching without tutorials, difficulty curves, failure/retry loops, assist modes.
• game-balance — loops, economies, cost curves, loot tables, prestige math, dominant-strategy audits.
• design-lenses — structured critique when the game exists but isn't fun; severity-ranked findings mapped to the modules above.
• finish-it — the project is sprawling or stalled; cut to a shippable core and ship it.

Remember

A great first game = generated art (not placeholders) + a tight full-screen follow camera + a core loop where every hit shakes, flashes, knocks back, and sprays particles. Build the art, build the loop, then spend real time on the craft pass — it's 10% of the code and 90% of the difference.