Asteroid Survivor

You're stranded in orbit. Asteroids are closing in, your oxygen is draining, and your only hope is what you can salvage from the wreckage. Shoot. Scrap. Craft. Survive all 3 waves or suffocate.

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Inspiration

Growing up, nothing hit like the rush of a quarter-fed arcade cabinet, the split-second decisions, the escalating chaos, the satisfaction of surviving one more wave. Asteroid Survivor was born from that feeling, reimagined with a modern twist and the kind of friendly, expressive visual style you'd catch on a Saturday morning cartoon. The goal was to capture that classic arcade tension while wrapping it in something fresh, colorful, and immediately readable. A game that feels familiar the moment you pick it up.

What it does

Asteroid Survivor is a 3-wave space survival shooter where you're the last line of defense between an astronaut stranded in orbit and an ever-growing field of incoming asteroid rocks. Your oxygen drains constantly. Asteroids spawn faster with every wave. Your only lifeline is the scrap you salvage from what you shoot down. Shoot asteroids to collect floating space junk. Spend that scrap at the craft menu to refill oxygen, repair your shield, or boost your crosshair. Survive all three waves, each one faster, more chaotic, and more punishing than the last, or suffocate trying. Every resource decision is a tradeoff. Every second you spend crafting is a second the next wave is getting closer.

How I built i

Asteroid Survivor was built entirely with modern web technologies. HTML5 Canvas, vanilla JavaScript with ES modules, and the Web Audio API for synthesized sound effects. Animations were created in ComfyUI, imagery was developed using Adobe Firefly and Microsoft Copilot, and all compositing work was done in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. The game logic, wave system, crafting economy, and oxygen mechanics were all coded with the help of Claude as an AI development partner. The result is a fully playable browser game with no frameworks, no dependencies, and no installation required.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest design challenge was the gameplay loop. How do you make a wave-based shooter feel tense and rewarding without tipping into being frustrating or repetitive? The answer turned out to be resource pressure. When oxygen drains faster than the wave timer, and scrap is the only way to buy more time, every shot becomes a decision, not just a reflex. Balancing that curve across three waves, tuning spawn rates, and making sure the crafting menu felt like a lifeline rather than a chore took more iteration than anything else in the project.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting this submitted is an accomplishment in itself, as it's my first time doing this but beyond that, building a fully playable, polished game with original artwork, custom animations, synthesized audio, a live-hosted web build, and a three-wave survival loop as a solo creator is something I'm genuinely proud of. The astronaut panic animation triggering at 50% oxygen. The space junk floating in orbit waiting to be collected. The moment a swarm event hits and the screen fills with debris. Those details came together better than expected.

What I learned

This project proved something I'd suspected for a while: the barrier between "I have an idea" and "I made a thing" has never been lower. I've spent 20 years as a motion graphics artist in the entertainment industry, and for just as long, making a video game felt like a different world entirely. One that required a team, an engine, and years of programming experience I didn't have. Using tools like Claude for code, ComfyUI for animation, and AI-assisted imagery pipelines, I was able to apply everything I already knew about motion, timing, and visual storytelling to something completely new. That's a shift I won't be going back from.

What's next for Asteroid Survivor

This project started as a proof of concept, but it's grown into the foundation of something bigger. I've been developing a light gun shooter arcade experience, and the mechanics built here, the wave system, the resource loop, and the on-screen feedback are exactly the kind of building blocks that this experience needs. The goal is to push Asteroid Survivor into a fuller arcade title with more stages, more enemy types, and hardware light gun support. The dream has always been a cabinet in an arcade. This submission is the first step toward that.

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