LittleJS - The Tiny JavaScript Game Engine That Can

All aboard!

LittleJS is a super lightweight JavaScript game engine with a fast hybrid rendering system. It provides a comprehensive set of tools including rendering, physics, particles, sound effects, music, input handling, and debug tools. The code is very clean and well documented with a variety of examples to get you started. Choo-Choo! 🚂

Examples

Hello World - Clean project with only a few things to get you started

Puzzle Game - Match 3 puzzle game with HD rendering and high score tracking

Platformer - Platformer/shooter with procedural generation and destruction

Breakout - Breakout game with post processing effect

Stress Test - Max sprite/object test and music system demo

Particle System Designer - Particle system editor and visualizer

Features

• Very small footprint with no dependencies
• Can update and render 10,000+ objects at 60fps, often many times more
• Object oriented system with fast 2D physics and collision handling for axis aligned boxes
• Positional audio effects with ZzFX and music with ZzFXM, mp3s, or wavs
• Input processing system with keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touch support
• Particle effects system (particle editor/designer in progress)
• Medal system tracks and displays achievements with Newgrounds and OS13k integration
• Several easy to understand example projects you can build on
• Apply Shadertoy compatible shaders for post processinge effects
• Debug tools and debug rendering system
• Full documentation automatically generated from the source code block tags with JSDoc
• Build system automatically combines everything, minifies, and removes unused code
• For size coding competitions like js13kGames, starter project builds to a 7KB zip file
• Easily build a Windows executable with Electron for distribution on platforms like Steam
• Open Source with the MIT license so it can be used for anything you want

Builds

To easily include LittleJS in your game, you can use one of the 3 pre-built js files. These are also built automatically by the build scripts.

• engine.all.js - The full game engine with debug mode available
• engine.all.release.js - The engine optimized for release builds
• engine.all.min.js - The engine in release mode and minified

The hello world example includes a batch file build.bat that compresses everything into a tiny zip file using Google Closure, UglifyJS, Roadroller, and ECT. You must run buildSetup.bat to install the necessary npm dependencies.

Debugging

Debug builds of LittleJS have a special menu that can be opened by pressing ~, the tilde key.

• ~: Debug Overlay
• 1: Debug Physics
• 2: Debug Particles
• 3: Debug Gamepads
• 4: God Mode
• 5: Save Screenshot

Games Made With LittleJS

• Space Huggers - Run and gun platformer with procedural levels
• Undergrowth - An interactive music videogame for the band Squid
• Space Huggers - JS13K Edition - Original js13k game with source code
• Isletopia - Relaxing strategy game of greenifying barren islands
• Dead Again - Top down survial horror by sanojian & repsej
• Hel's Trial - Turn based RPG by Sebastian Dorn
• Bit Butcher - Survival crafting game by Deathray Games
• Necrotic Commander - Tower defense game by Daniel Jeffery
• Boxing up Bamboo - A challenging puzzle game by Patrick Traynor
• Send me your games!