10kTower - Build your vertical empire

10kTower is a project created for the 10k Apart 2016 contest. The objective is to create an online experience which degrades gracefully, functions without JS, and has an initial download size of under 10k.

This game was inspired by the classic tower building title SimTower. Each type of floor has different needs and you'll have to listen to your tenants to create the perfect tower.

Check it out at http://10ktower.webrender.net.
Source available on Github: http://10ktower.webrender.net

Original post below:

Hey everyone!  I’ve been telling a bunch of people about the game I’ve been programming as a contest entry for the 10k Apart contest. More info at the link, but TLDR the requirements for contest entries are:

  • Must be functional & accessible in as many browsers as possible
  • Each page (“functional baseline experience”) must be contained in under 10kb
    • HTML, Frontend JS, CSS, Assets
    • Backend & XHR-ed data do not count towards this total

For my entry, I’ve been programming a tower-building sim inspired by SimTower. You can see above what it looks what it looks like in a modern browser, here’s what it looks like in Lynx, in a standard-size terminal window:

I’ve just been putting the finishing touches on the core loop & critical path to submit my entry. I’d love if people would check it out at my staging site, http://10ktower.webrender.net, and tell me what you think!

I’m sure there are a lot of bugs and I’d love to hear about them so I can fix as many as possible before submitting (the deadline is Sept 30).

Bug reports & Issues I’m looking to hear about:

  • Functional errors i.e. the game stops working or is in a broken state
  • Javascript console errors
  • Game loop opinions i.e. it takes too long to make money, I don’t think this floor should behave in this way
  • UI suggestions i.e. I can’t figure out why something is the way it is, or where to do something I want to do.

Things I’m already looking at and don’t need to hear about:

  • cross-browser CSS & JS compatibility
  • accessibility

You can also take a peek at the source code over at https://github.com/webrender/10ktower.  Thanks to anyone who checks it out and lets me know what they think!

p.s. you can also check out my dev trello for this to see my ideation process, and you can play the original SimTower in your browser (in a browser dos emulator running windows 3.1!) here.