A physics toy that turned into a game

Level 2: two to three weeks, real architecture. Use with: build-a-game, build-web-app. Resume line when done: Built {project_name}, a physics-based browser game — live at {url}

Brief

Start with a toy: things on a canvas that fall, bounce, stack, or swing, fun to poke with a mouse before there are any rules. Then add a goal and a way to fail, and the toy becomes a game: knock the tower off the ledge in three shots, stack ten shapes without a topple, sling the projectile into the target. You can write the physics yourself (gravity plus circle collisions is enough) or use a small library, but you must be able to explain every line of the update loop. Finished means at least eight levels, a menu with level select, and a URL.

Personalize

• Your toy. Pick the physical thing you find satisfying: stacking, smashing, slinging, or swinging. Spend real time on feel before any goal exists; the toy has to be fun with no score on screen.
• Your objects. The shapes are things from your life: your school's vending machine snacks, your cat, the furniture from your room. Draw them or photograph them.
• Your playtesters. Name two people. One should be the kind who tries to break things; levels get better when someone hunts for the cheese strategy.

Milestones

1. The toy: objects with gravity, bounce, and mouse interaction on a canvas. Deploy it while it is still just a toy.
2. Tuning pass: change gravity, restitution, and drag until poking it is genuinely fun. Record the numbers you settled on and why in the README.
3. Add the goal: one hardcoded level with a win condition the physics can actually detect.
4. Add the fail state: limited shots, a timer, or a topple. Losing must be unambiguous and show a retry.
5. End of week one: one complete level is playable, win and lose both work, retry loops cleanly.
6. Levels move into data: each level is an entry in a file, so making level five is editing data instead of code.
7. Eight or more levels with a difficulty ramp, each introducing a twist on the last.
8. Menu with level select; finished levels get a mark, and a level's best result is remembered in localStorage.
9. Juice pass: impact sounds scaled to collision speed, a satisfying win moment, debris that lingers.
10. Playtest one: watch your breaker-of-things play every level. Note where they cheesed a level or quit.
11. Rebuild the cheesed levels, retest with your second tester, ship with a gif in the README.

Done means

• Live URL with at least eight completable levels
• The toy layer still holds up: moving things around is fun even when you are not trying to win
• Every level can be won and lost, and both states are obvious
• Level progress and best results survive a reload
• Both named playtesters finished the game, and at least two levels changed because of how they played
• At least 15 commits across at least 10 distinct days, authored by you
• SESSIONS.md has an entry per session, written by you