Paddle Ball is a small retro-style browser game and the first game I ever made, which makes this project really special to me.
I started it back in August 2025 during GWC, then picked it up again in December to improve it. After that, I randomly came back to it again and decided to fully clean it up, fix bugs, and make it feel more complete.
Moving everything into VS Code was lowkey chaotic 😭 but I learned a lot debugging it. I did get some help from AI tools like Claude and Codex when things got messy, especially during bug fixing and polishing, but the core of the game and how it works is mine.
This is a simple paddle-and-ball survival game made using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (canvas).
The idea is pretty straightforward:
- Don’t let the ball fall past your paddle
- You get points every time you hit it back up
- The longer you last, the harder it gets
- Try to beat your high score
Also… the paddle shrinks over time, so yeah it gets stressful fast.
- Retro arcade-inspired look
- Mouse and keyboard controls
- Start screen and how-to-play screen
- Pause and restart controls
- Difficulty modes
- Lives system
- Best score saved with localStorage
- Increasing difficulty over time
- End-of-run stat summary
- Shield power-up
- Particle effects and animated background
- Mouse: move the paddle
- A / D: move left and right
- Left Arrow / Right Arrow: move left and right
- P: pause or resume
- R: restart
- Enter or Space: start from the welcome screen
- 1 / 2 / 3: choose Easy / Normal / Hard from the welcome screen
- index.html sets up the page and canvas
- style.css styles the game frame and page
- script.js contains the full game logic
p5play.js was used in earlier versions but has been removed as the current game uses custom canvas JavaScript