Last Light is an intense, top-down survival arena shooter inspired by Alice in Borderland. The game is deeply tied to the Solstice theme of Light vs. Darkness and the passage of time.
As a lone samurai, you are trapped in a 12-hour cycle (from 18:00 to 06:00). Your weapon is a "Spirit Slash" that relies entirely on Solar Energy. To survive the encroaching dark and the endless hordes of demons, you must constantly seek out golden "Sanctuaries" to recharge your light.
As the hours tick by, the darkness grows stronger, and the arena itself evolves against you:
- 21:00 (The Walls Rise): Massive cursed barriers emerge, forcing you into a maze.
- 00:00 (Midnight): Lethal, rotating lasers ignite across the arena.
- 03:00 (Spirit Fading): The safe sanctuaries detach and begin moving erratically.
- 05:00 (The Demon Lord): The final shadow descends. The goal was to create a high-stakes, fast-paced game where the environment is just as deadly as the enemies, perfectly capturing the feeling of fighting through the longest, darkest night of the year to finally see the sun rise.
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Last Light: A June Solstice Survival Arena
Last Light is an intense, top-down survival arena shooter built for the June Solstice Game Jam. It features dynamic mechanics inspired by Alice in Borderland, where the arena itself evolves to become your greatest enemy as the hours pass.
The Theme: Light, Darkness, and the Solstice
As the June Solstice arrives, the game explores the balance between light and darkness. You must constantly seek the golden "Light Zones" to recharge your solar weapon while fending off creatures of the dark. As the 12-hour cycle progresses, the darkness encroaches, and the arena becomes progressively more hostile.
The Mechanics
- Solar Weaponry: Your weapon drains Solar Energy instead of ammo. You must stand in golden light zones to recharge.
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Map Evolution: Over the course of 12 hours (waves), the arena evolves
- 09:00: Massive neon walls rise from the ground, creating an impenetrable maze.
- 12:00: Lethal…
How I Built It
I built the game entirely from scratch using React and HTML5 Canvas, with Vite as the build tool.
Technical Highlights:
Custom Game Engine: Instead of using a heavy game framework like Phaser or Unity, I built a pure requestAnimationFrame loop inside a React useEffect. React handles the state management, HUD, and overlays (like the Turing minigame), while the Canvas API handles rendering thousands of particles, enemies, and complex hitboxes at 60 FPS.
Map Evolution: I implemented dynamic rectCircleCollision and lineCircleCollision algorithms. This allowed me to spawn solid maze walls mid-game that block both player movement and enemy pathing, as well as sweeping lasers that deal precise damage.
Twin-Stick Mobile Support: I wrote native Multi-Touch event listeners (touchstart, touchmove, touchend) to intercept mobile interactions. Dragging on the left half of the screen creates a dynamic virtual joystick for movement, while dragging on the right controls the samurai's slash angle. The canvas scales responsively to any viewport using CSS object-fit.
Prize Categories
I am submitting Last Light for the following bonus categories:
Best Google AI Usage: The hyper-realistic, dark futuristic arena background (the neon-lit floor grid) was generated entirely using Google's Imagen AI models. This gave the game a premium, Alice in Borderland visual aesthetic that perfectly matched the "Darkness" theme.
Best Ode to Alan Turing: In honor of Alan Turing's legendary code-breaking legacy at Bletchley Park, the game features a Spades-style decryption minigame during pivotal hours. Time completely freezes, and a "TURING DECRYPTION REQUIRED" overlay appears. Players must read an 8-bit binary tape and decrypt it into the correct decimal number before the demons consume them. This directly honors his contributions to algorithms and modern computing by making code-breaking a literal survival mechanic!
