Mallow Man Meltdown (working title)

A G-rated, smartphone-first (portrait, one-thumb) candy-land flight game. Simpler than a 3D physics puzzler by design.

You are a glider pilot defending Candy City from the Evil Marshmallow Man, a giant perched atop a cloud, hurling goo-filled marshmallows at you and the city. Melt him with jelly beans before his goo cakes your wings or his frost covers the city. Nothing dies; the finale is dessert.

▶ Play it: https://kevinhegg.github.io/mallow-man-meltdown/ (best on a phone, held upright)

• DESIGN.md — the full game design (mechanics, boss stages, win/lose)
• claude-code-scaffold-prompt.md — the prompt this playable scaffold was built from

Stack: Phaser 3.90 (Matter physics) · Vite · plain JavaScript. All art is procedural (Phaser Graphics → textures) and all sound is a tiny WebAudio synth, so there are no asset files.

Run

npm install
npm run dev

npm run dev opens the game in your browser. The dev server is also exposed on your LAN, so you can open the printed "Network" URL on a phone on the same Wi-Fi.

• npm run build writes a static build to dist/
• npm run preview serves that build locally

Dev shortcuts (query string)

URL	Effect
?scene=boss	Skips the flight: the pilot parachutes straight onto the rooftop fight
?scene=win / ?scene=lose	Goes straight to the end screen
?debug	Shows Matter physics bodies

In dev builds the game instance is available as window.__game.

Controls

	Touch / mouse	Keyboard
Launch (slingshot)	Drag back anywhere to stretch and aim, let go; or just tap	Space / Enter
Steer	Drag anywhere (relative, like a trackpad)	Arrows / WASD
Fire jelly beans	Every tap/click (a second finger can tap-fire while the first steers)	Space
Bubble Boost	BOOST button	Z
Shake	SHAKE button	X
Rooftop (finale): run	Drag anywhere	Arrows / A-D
Rooftop: spray jelly beans	Keep your finger down	Hold Space
Goo comet (flight, while loaded)	Keep pulling down into the floor until SPLAT!, then let go	Hold Down/S, release
FLING goo (rooftop, while loaded)	FLING button	F

How it plays

• Launch: every flight opens with the glider loaded in a candy slingshot (candy-cane forks, frosting bands, gumdrop base), with the title over it on first load. Pull back to stretch the bands and aim (sprinkle dots show where it will go; pulling left flings right), then let go. A plain tap launches at a default pull. The fling is a free first boost: a speed burst that fades into cruise over about 3 s. Control is yours about 0.85 s after release.
• Flight (~40 s): fly into the horizon down a gently curving candy valley, with sugar-cube towers and gumdrop houses streaming past on both sides and candy-cane arches sweeping overhead. The glider banks into turns and pitches on climbs and dives (the horizon dips and rises with it), and wind streaks pick up with speed. The boss sits on his cloud at the horizon and grows as you get closer (he is the progress meter). Dodge sugar-cube ledges, licorice gates and gumdrops as they come at you out of the distance (bonks knock you back). Altitude matters too: candy-cane gates hang a candy curtain from above (dive under or get bonked), and sticky frosting banks float low (climb over or get gooed like a goo-mallow hit); a pulsing chevron by the glider points the safe way while you're in the way. Candy-cane thermals (striped columns rising from vents) lift you and make goo drip off about 6× faster while you ride them. Late in the flight the boss also flings cotton-candy blasts: the landing spot is marked with a pulsing ring, and they burst into a hanging spun-sugar cloud that holds you (slow, weak steering) for as long as you're inside, about 8 s before it dissipates. It's not goo: a boost tears you free. Grab soda bubbles (+1 Boost) and sugar shakers (+1 Shake) while they hover at mid-depth. The boss lobs goo-mallows at you and at the city.
• The bail-out: the flight ends by flying into the boss's cloud. The gingerbread pilot bails out under a candy parachute, the empty glider sails on into the cloud, and he floats down through the cloud onto a candy rooftop. There is no cut: the cloud wall rises around him in the flight and parts around him on the roof (both scenes build the identical seeded cloud).
• Boss (rooftop): built from marshmallows glued together with frosting, he looms over the roof at giant scale and fights differently as he melts. PRISTINE: slow, smug, aimed throws. SAGGING: lobbed goo bombs that burst over you into a widening splatter. ARM OFF!: the arm tears off in a goo burst, and he trembles, throws fast and wild, and swats straight down when you stand right under him. COLLAPSING: feeble, drooping lobs with long pauses. The pilot runs and sprays jelly beans from a blaster whose gumball hopper fires in bursts and refills (held fire sputters to a trickle; the BEANS jar in the bottom-left corner shows what's left), so you dart under him, unload and dodge. Gingerbread chimneys are cover: behind one, goo can't reach you, but you can't shoot. Goo that misses you splats on the roof; throws at the city frost the skyline behind it. Every 7–10 s he also fires a cotton-candy blast that lands as a sticky patch on the roof: inside it you run at a crawl (you can still shoot), until it dissipates after about 8 s. The skyline's gingerbread residents freeze in ice blocks as their buildings frost over. Drips, sloughing chunks and his melt puddle grow each stage until he melts away.

Project layout

src/
  main.js              game config, portrait sizing, gesture blocking, rotate-pause
  config.js            palette, collision categories, depth order, all tuning knobs (TUNE)
  sfx.js               WebAudio synth (no audio files)
  art/textures.js      every procedural texture
  objects/
    Glider.js          handling model: mass-aware spring, goo splats, CoG list, cleanses, spiral
    GooCoat.js         pooled slime sprites that show the goo tier on the glider
    Controls.js        drag-steer / tap-fire / keyboard
    Pilot.js           the gingerbread pilot on foot (run, blaster, goo, shake, cover) + his controls
    Rooftop.js         the finale roof: baked roof and facade, chimneys (cover), goo splats
    CottonCandy.js     the boss's sticky cotton-candy traps (flight: hanging clouds; roof: patches)
    Residents.js       gingerbread residents on the skyline: freeze with frost, thaw and cheer
    Slingshot.js       the opening launch: stretch, aim, fling, hand-over
    Projectiles.js     jelly beans + goo-mallows (Matter sensors)
    City.js            skyline + frost meter
    MarshmallowMan.js  boss rig, throw AI (ballistic aim), 4-stage melt
  view/
    Projector.js       tiny pseudo-3D projector (no 3D engine)
    Valley.js          curving valley walls, ground, arches, two-layer horizon (pooled billboards)
    Wind.js            pooled wind streaks that scale with speed
    Heights.js         altitude obstacles (gates to dive under, frosting banks to climb over) + thermals
    CloudCover.js      the seeded cloud wall the bail-out passes through (rises in Flight, parts on the roof)
    Pools.js           pooled depth-scaled sprites + reusable Matter props
  ui/
    Hud.js             goo/frost chips, solid Boost/Shake buttons, the rooftop's bean-hopper jar, banners (no bars)
    helpers.js         text/sky/button helpers, particles, collision router, run state
  scenes/              Boot (textures), Flight (slingshot launch → valley → bail-out), Boss (the rooftop fight), End

Gameplay is strictly 2D on the screen plane. Depth is only decorative: in Flight, a tiny projector (screen = horizon + (x, y) / z * focal) draws the valley and scales goo, beans and props by depth, while collisions stay in screen space. Most balance lives in TUNE in src/config.js.

Deploy

GitHub Pages (live): .github/workflows/deploy-pages.yml builds and publishes to https://kevinhegg.github.io/mallow-man-meltdown/ on every push to main.

Netlify (alternative, free tier): netlify.toml is included (build npm run build, publish dist, Node 22). Connect the repo in Netlify, or drag the dist/ folder onto app.netlify.com/drop.