I Built an Arcade and Nobody Stopped Me

Porchlight Games is open. It has twenty-three games, optional accounts, and one jar that now has 20,000 levels, which is a number I picked because I could.

There is an arcade on this site now. I did not plan an arcade. I planned one small game, and then the one small game started recruiting.

It's called Porchlight Games, it lives at games.hamelton.net, and it currently holds twenty-three games. They are free, they run in the browser, and they work on a phone as well as a computer. No app store. No install. No tiny pop-up asking me to rate my experience of a cat crossing a road.

What's Actually In There

Mostly the kind of games I wanted to play and couldn't find without a banner ad attached. Arcade reflex games, puzzles, a couple of card games, word games, and some memory ones. Each game is a single self-contained page, which means they load fast and break in simple, understandable ways.

Smokey the cat crossing a busy road with trains on the tracks — Smokey's Nine Lives. Get the cat across. She has nine tries, which is generous by road standards.

Plinkjar with merged orbs and a level goal — Plinkjar. Drop orbs, match two of a kind, merge your way toward the Sunstone.

Geode Rush with cracked geodes and a crystal match board — Geode Rush. Crack open the Keokuk bluffs, then match the crystals.

I am particularly fond of Geode Rush. Keokuk is geode country, and it felt wrong to build an arcade here without at least one game where you hit a rock with a pickaxe and get rewarded for it.

Towerfold, a stack of isometric slabs against a purple sky — Towerfold. Stack it straight. Build it sky high.

Hoplight, a bouncing character climbing glowing platforms — Hoplight. Never stop bouncing before the dusk catches you.

Wickswing, swinging between lanterns over a fire — Wickswing. Swing from lantern to lantern and outrun the fire.

Brickjab, numbered bricks descending a grid — Brickjab. Aim, fire, and break the bricks before they reach the floor.

Accounts, If You Want Them

You can play without signing up. If you make an account, your scores are saved, your settings follow you around, and you can show up on the leaderboards, which I am currently dominating, though that says more about the player count than my skill.

There is also a settings page now with a real volume slider. A surprising number of browser games have two volume settings: loud and off.

The Part Where I Got Carried Away

Plinkjar has a campaign with 20,000 levels. Each one has a specific goal, a score to reach or an orb to make, and every twenty-fifth level is a boss. Your progress is saved to your account, so you can keep going from a different device.

Is 20,000 levels reasonable? No. Will anyone finish them? Also no. But I started typing the number and could not find a good reason to delete a zero.

Go Break Something

If you try it, tell me which game ate your afternoon. If you find something broken, tell me that too. Either way, the arcade is open.