Whack-a-Bug

Squash the bugs. Spare the bots. Keep the combo alive.

A quick browser arcade game by Ádám Porkoláb, built with AI assistance. Nine holes, two modes, and a Bot Buddy that helps clear the board. Designed for https://aporkolab.github.io/.

Play

Choose Normal for a 45-second round or Chill for a slower 60-second round. Click or tap a hole, or use the keyboard:

Row	Left	Centre	Right
Top	Q	W	E
Middle	A	S	D
Bottom	Z	X	C

Target	Base score
Bug	+10
Bonus bug	+25
Friendly bot	−20
Empty hole	−5

Every five consecutive bug hits raises the multiplier, up to 5×. An escaped bug, a friendly-bot hit, or an empty-hole hit breaks the combo. Your score never falls below zero.

Six manual bug hits charge Bot Buddy. Activate it to clear the visible bugs and bonus bugs while leaving friendly bots alone. Assisted hits score points but do not recharge the ability.

Everything runs locally in the browser. Bot Buddy is a game mechanic; it does not call an LLM or require an API key. The illustrations are local SVG artwork defined in source code.

Run locally

Serve the static files with Python 3:

python3 -m http.server 8000 --directory dist

Open http://localhost:8000. Use an HTTP server because the game loads native JavaScript modules.

The application is buildless. The files in dist/ are the maintained application source and the deployable site. No bundler or dependency installation is required.

Test

With Node.js 22 or later:

npm test

The 12 engine tests use Node's built-in test runner. They cover deterministic spawning, round timing, scoring, combos, pauses, Bot Buddy, and invalid inputs. The Pages workflow runs them before uploading the site. Browser layout and interaction checks are a separate part of development.

Deploy to GitHub Pages

The account-root URL requires the specially named repository aporkolab/aporkolab.github.io. It is a user site, not an automatically created repository.

For a first deployment:

1. Create a public repository named aporkolab.github.io under aporkolab, if it does not already exist.
2. Put this project's files in that repository, keeping the .github/workflows/pages.yml workflow and the dist/ directory, and push them to main.
3. Open Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source and choose GitHub Actions.
4. In Actions, run Test and deploy Whack-a-Bug if the initial push occurred before Pages was enabled.
5. After the deploy job succeeds, open https://aporkolab.github.io/.

Later pushes to main automatically test and publish dist/. The workflow uses the official GitHub Pages artifact deployment actions and the github-pages environment. It needs no personal access token or custom deployment secret.

GitHub's custom Pages workflow documentation explains the publishing source, artifact, permissions, and deployment environment.

Source map

File	Responsibility
dist/index.html	Application shell and semantic interface
dist/styles.css	Visual design and responsive layout
dist/art.js	Local SVG characters and artwork
dist/app.js	Browser interactions and rendering
dist/engine.js	Game state, spawning, timing, and scoring
dist/favicon.svg	Site icon
tests/*.test.mjs	Game engine checks
.github/workflows/pages.yml	Test, package, and Pages deployment