Weird Games
Odd little browser games. The first one is Query Arcade: a fast, retro arcade for SQL and PySpark.
/ is the Weird Games hub./query-arcade is Query Arcade (attract screen, 7 modes, high scores, player profile)./daily-weird is Daily Weird Guess: one absurd fact a day (midnight IST), two choices, a streak
and a streak board. Facts live server-side in src/lib/daily/facts.ts, so the answer only reaches
the browser after a guess. One guess per player per day (dw_players, dw_guesses)./rubber-bullet-man is Rubber Bullet Man: a canvas arena shooter where every bullet bounces, including
back at you. Five bullet types, waves with a boss every fifth wave, and a daily/all-time board (rbm_scores)./down-the-couch is Down the Couch: a roguelite card RPG. Four heroes, four areas with bosses, a branching map,
shops, campfires, events, trinkets and level-ups. Runs and Junk Drawer upgrades save in the browser (no server).
npm run test:dtc plays hundreds of bot runs to catch stuck states and check balance./pinball-dungeon is Pinball Dungeon: a pinball roguelike where you are the ball. 12 rooms of monsters, bosses in rooms
4, 8 and 12, an upgrade pick after each room. Bests save in the browser. npm run test:pinball -- <runs> <skill> plays bot runs.
Query Arcade in one minute
- Real SQL runs in your browser with sql.js (SQLite compiled to WebAssembly).
- Answers are checked by result, not by text, so any correct query passes. Column names and
column order are ignored; row order only matters when the question asks for it.
- Every day (midnight IST) a new synthetic mini-dataset is generated from one of six themes:
retail orders, IPL innings, Mumbai locals, movies, food delivery and music streams.
Everything is invented. No real company or employer data.
- PySpark is taught honestly: no Spark runs in the browser. PySpark answers (tile ordering,
fill-in-the-blank, picking the right chain) go through a small DataFrame-to-SQL translator
and are checked against the same result as the SQL.
Modes
Blitz · Fix the Bug · Predict the Output · Pipeline Builder · Data Detective · SQL vs PySpark · 1v1 Race
Fair leaderboards
POST /api/qa/run/start signs a token with the run's seed, mode, day and start time.- The browser plays the run and keeps an event log (answers, hints, skips, timestamps).
POST /api/qa/run/submit rebuilds the exact same questions from the signed seed, re-runs every
answer with sql.js on the server, and recomputes the score with the same rules. The score the
browser shows is never trusted. Tokens are single-use, runs expire after 20 minutes, answers
can't claim more time than has passed, and impossibly fast answers are rejected.
Run locally
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:3000
npm test # generates thousands of rounds and checks each is solvable
Without DATABASE_URL the game runs fully offline with a local (per-device) high score table.
To use the global leaderboard locally, put a Neon connection string in .env.local:
DATABASE_URL=postgres://...
Tables are created automatically on first use (qa_players, qa_scores, qa_rooms).
Deploy (Vercel + Neon, free tiers)
- Import this repo as a new Vercel project.
- In the project, open Storage, choose Create Database, pick Neon, and select the
Singapore region (
aws-ap-southeast-1). Vercel adds DATABASE_URL to the project for you.
- Redeploy. Optional: set
GAME_SECRET to any long random string (otherwise one is derived
from DATABASE_URL).
Never commit the connection string.
