Game Mechanics
Design engaging game mechanics like points, levels, and powerups.
What You'll Learn
Description
Ever wanted to know what makes a game actually fun? It is not the graphics — it is the mechanics: the score that ticks up when you grab a coin, the lives that drain when you mess up, the powerup that makes you unstoppable for five glorious seconds. In this tutorial you will build all of it, for real, with code you can read and tweak.
Your Vibe Coding Academy avatar will guide you through real JavaScript examples and the exact AI prompts you can use to build each piece. Every snippet here is real, working code — no hand-waving, no "imagine if" placeholders.
By the end you'll have a working mental model of how almost every 2D game is built: state, a game loop, collisions, spawning, powerups, difficulty, win/lose, and a high score that survives a page refresh. Let's go!
What's Inside
- Ch 1 — Introduction: what a "mechanic" really is and how to talk to AI about it
- Ch 2 — Score, Lives & Levels: tracking state and a real game loop
- Ch 3 — Powerups & Difficulty: collisions, spawning, timed effects
- Ch 4 — Build Your Game Loop: win/lose and a saved high score
