Cyber Cquabble

An 80's style arcade game, with such fun things as high scores, looping levels, extra lives, gaming over with 1 life left, looping, and text that changes color every frame. Kill everything on the screen to clear the wave, how fun.

Control schemes:
WSAD + J to shoot, K to jump
Arrows + Z to shoot, X to jump
Or, use a controller

Was meant to have more of an aesthetic of something like Defender, Joust, etc, but I realized pretty quickly this would have been a bit much for me, as you might be able to tell I am not the drawing type. Tried to make it a bit annoying but still feel good.

Wound up just cutting audio entirely. Mostly because I ran into an issue with text/fonts, I wasted a lot of time trying to get text legible with the low resolution canvas, but just wound up just hacking it and drawing it on top with html. Plus, collision detection/making the controls feel good ate up a lot of time.

Comments9

wo_ri_gou_le19 Oct 2026, 13:57

The lava is so unfair lol, I can tell it took a lot of effort recreate this sloppy old way of control, pity the audio failed otherwise it'd be really peak in its own way.

Mugule19 Oct 2026, 20:00

Lol lava is peak. Thanks for this little rage.

henk19 Oct 2026, 21:14

I got to Wave 10 a score of 270734.

I have no clue how to rate this. It accurately reproduces everything awful about older arcade platformers, but is clearly doing so intentionally. I want to give you points for that but somehow no category seems to fit (humor?).

That said, I don't think the homage feels complete without music and sound effects.

ExciteMike20 Oct 2026, 03:14

I do enjoy arcadey stuff! And going out of your way to recreate jankiness :) And thanks for making the collision forgiving! I quite stink at it, though, which to be fair matches my performance at old games.

Willops20 Oct 2026, 03:53

These controls are awful, gets a 5 in theme easily XD

But seriously, awesome concept, great job emulating the shittiness of the past

rekk1d20 Oct 2026, 11:27

Fun little arcade game, really feels like an old 80s cabinet. With some music and sound effects it would be perfect!

PurpledArtFrog20 Oct 2026, 18:22

On point this one... it truly is old tech... felt like an arcade machine at the burger joint... really good job with the theme.

Nnnnneeeedddd21 Oct 2026, 13:02

in wave one, the pink things shoot at me, nothing to shoot, nothing else happens? I picked up a yellow thing at one point. I'm missing something.

I keep feeling like these ld games are insanely complicated. Maybe I'm the perfect idiot test?

ghettobastler21 Oct 2026, 13:14

Nice take on the theme. I think you nailed the "annoying but still good" feeling. Having no air control is a challenge, but the double jump makes it less frustrating, and after a little bit I got used to it. Great job on the graphics!