The game
Ice 'N' Water brings the street chase every Nigerian kid grew up with to the
browser: runners scatter, the militia chase, and a single touch freezes you —
until a teammate's tap melts you back in.
- Adventure — a 500-level campaign. The Road North runs through 50
real Nigerian towns. Lagos Island → Oshodi → Ibadan → Abuja → Kano →
Maiduguri. Fog hides the road ahead; every milestone burns it off. Earn
up to 3 stars per level and climb the global leaderboard.
- Sign in with X to play. The game is gated: a verified X account is
required before the app boots. OAuth runs on the api deployment and
hands an HMAC-signed session token back via postMessage — it works
inside the itch iframe where third-party cookies can't. The same
session signs every score submit (verified id, no spoofed rows) and
every multiplayer join (short-lived room ticket).
- Online multiplayer. 4-digit room codes, server-authoritative rounds
(Colyseus), up to 10 players — ice freezes water, mates thaw the frozen.
- Nigerian voice acting. YarnGPT-generated lines — "UP NEPA!", "I dey
come!", "Dem don catch am!" — plus danfo, rain and NEPA random events.
- Mobile + desktop. Touch joystick, responsive layout, gamepad-friendly.
Tech
| Layer | Stack |
|---|
| Game | TypeScript · Phaser 3 (Arcade Physics) · Vite |
| Multiplayer | Colyseus (server/) |
| Leaderboard | Upstash Redis behind a serverless proxy — api/ (Vercel) or worker/ (Cloudflare), zero secrets in the client |
| Voices | YarnGPT (regenerate via gen-voices.mjs) |
Run it
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:5173 (#adventure or #lobby to jump scenes)
npm run build # production bundle → dist/
npm run zip # flat itch.io archive
Deploy
- Auth + leaderboard API: deploy
api/ via Vercel. Set X_CLIENT_ID
(X developer app, callback <api-origin>/api/auth/x/callback),
SESSION_SECRET, UPSTASH_REST_URL + UPSTASH_REST_TOKEN, then point
the game at it with VITE_API_URL=https://<your-api>.vercel.app and
VITE_BOARD_URL=https://<your-api>.vercel.app/api. Whitelist the api
origin's callback in the X app settings.
- Cloudflare alternative: the Worker in
worker/ still serves the
board, but the X gate needs the api/ functions. With VITE_API_URL
unset the client auths against its own origin (the monolith case —
it will warn, and 404s if no api is hosted there); with neither
VITE_API_URL nor VITE_BOARD_URL set the game boots open (dev mode).
- Multiplayer: deploy
server/ to any Node host (Render-ready:
render.yaml), set VITE_SERVER_URL, and give the server the same
SESSION_SECRET — that's how it verifies room tickets.
- Full env reference:
.env.production.example.
Credits
Built with Devin. Voices by YarnGPT. For every kid who
ever yelled "ICE!" in the streets of Lagos.
