Save the Earth

What did you make?
I created the “Save the Earth” project. It is a clicker game that runs in your browser. Earth stands at the center of the screen while the dangers that our planet faces today, such as pollution, global warming, deforestation, plastic waste, appear around it and try to reach it. You have to click them and destroy before they get to Earth. Each successful threat reaching Earth decreases its health, and therefore players lose their score. The game contains the start screen with the instructions, live health bar and score counter, and the game-over screen with the restart button.

What was challenging?
HTML layout turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated – every time I ended up with the duplicated or nested divs. Threat movement calculations were a little complicated as well since I had to determine the direction and distance from every threat to Earth in every single frame. From the aesthetic side, my initial attempt looked quite generic/AI-template-ish (white pill buttons, circled emoji icons), which made me spend time redesigning the UI with a custom monospace font.

What are you proud of?
I am proud that instead of stereotypical aliens, “the enemies” are the actual problems which the environment faces. I also feel proud because now I have managed to implement the full cycle of the game: starting screen > gameplay > game over > restarting without requiring a page refresh.

What do people need to know to play it?
To start playing this game, one needs to click on the “Start Game” button. Threats will be coming to Earth from the corners of the screen and the player is supposed to click them before they reach Earth. In case a threat reaches Earth, then the health bar on top of the screen starts decreasing.