Doomscroll Dungeon

Inspiration

Doomscroll Dungeon was inspired by the feeling of sitting in your room, scrolling your phone out of boredom, and suddenly realizing you are stuck in a loop. I wanted to turn that everyday experience into a small RPG where the player gets pulled into a digital phone dungeon and has to fight distractions, repair a broken Local AI Assistant, and escape.

What it does

Doomscroll Dungeon is a 2D pixel RPG made with the Maki framework. The player explores a phone-themed dungeon, collects AI Core Parts, repairs the Local AI Assistant, manages Doomscroll and Battery meters, avoids distraction enemies, and escapes through a portal once the AI is restored.

The game includes:

Player movement AI repair quest Collectible AI Core Parts Local AI Assistant NPC Doomscroll meter Battery meter Coffee and charger pickups Enemies like Notification Bat, Algorithm Slime, and Doomscroll Goblin Portal escape objective Glitch-style challenge mechanics How we built it

We built the game using JavaScript and the Maki framework. We started from a basic Maki project, then customized the story, sprites, map, HUD, player objectives, collectibles, NPC dialogue, enemy interactions, and win condition.

Pixel-art assets were generated and then added into the project as game sprites. The gameplay systems were built step by step so the game stayed playable while adding more challenge.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge was getting the generated sprite sheets to work properly. At first, the game loaded the entire PNG sheet instead of showing just one character frame, so we had to adjust how sprites were cropped or displayed.

Another challenge was keeping the game stable while adding more gameplay systems. Features like meters, pickups, enemies, portal logic, and quest progression had to work together without breaking the original movement and map.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m proud that Doomscroll Dungeon became more than just a simple walking demo. It has a story, a goal, a broken AI character to repair, enemies, meters, pickups, and a clear escape objective.

I’m also proud of turning a small idea — getting trapped by doomscrolling — into an actual playable RPG concept with custom pixel-art assets and a complete game loop.

What we learned

I learned how to set up and run a JavaScript game project, use the Maki framework, work with game assets, debug sprite issues, and build gameplay systems gradually. I also learned that for a hackathon, it is better to keep the game working first and then add polish instead of trying to make everything perfect immediately.

What's next for Doomscroll Dungeon

Next, I would like to add better animations, more rooms, stronger enemy behavior, dialogue choices, sound effects, and a more complete final boss sequence against the Infinite Feed. I would also improve the map design so the dungeon feels more like a phone world with apps, notifications, and corrupted digital zones.

Built With

• javascript
• maki