A top-down arcade pickleball game for the browser. You vs the CPU, first to 11, win by 2 — and yes, the kitchen rules are real.
No dependencies, no build step.
- Tournament: climb a ladder of 8 named opponents, each with a distinct playstyle — from Rookie Rick to The Wall. Win to advance a rung; lose and retry. Progress is saved in your browser.
- Quick Play: a single game vs an easy/medium/hard CPU.
- Doubles: you and a CPU partner vs two CPUs — one hit per team, your partner covers whichever half you don't.
- Skinny Singles: half-court practice game; the right half is out for everyone.
- Best of 3: toggle on the difficulty row for any quick-play variant.
- Daily challenge: a date-seeded opponent and physics modifier (crosswinds, moon gravity…) — one win credit per day.
Points end with a slow-mo replay of the final shot (any key skips it). Sound is fully synthesized — mute with M or the speaker button.
Stats (wins, shutouts, championships, longest rally, dailies) persist in
your browser, and milestones unlock paddle colors and ball skins in the
Locker on the main menu. The Locker also picks the court backdrop —
Club Green, Golden Hour, Night Match, Beachside, Neon Grid, Northern
Lights, Championship Night, or Hanami — free to switch anytime. The
animated ones hold still under prefers-reduced-motion.
ES modules need an HTTP server (opening index.html directly won't work):
python3 -m http.server 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000or npm start, which runs the same command.
Touch devices: controls appear on first touch — left joystick moves (and
steers your shots), right-hand buttons are the five strokes (DRIVE / DINK /
TOP / SLICE / LOB), each with the same hold-to-charge, release-to-swing
timing; DRIVE also serves.
To play on your phone, serve over your network (python3 -m http.server 8000) and open http://<your-computer-ip>:8000.
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys / WASD | Move |
| Mouse | Aim — the crosshair is where your shots (and serves) go. It roams past the lines: clean, planted strikes fly true, so keeping the ball in (or threading it around the post) is on you. |
| Space / mouse button | Drive: hold to charge power, release to swing as the ball arrives. Mistimed swings whiff. |
| Shift | Dink swing (hold + release the same way) — a soft drop into the opponent's kitchen |
| E / Q | Topspin / slice swing. Topspin dips — same target, faster ball, kicks forward off the bounce. Slice floats in and skids low. A badge under your player shows the stroke you're charging. |
| F | Lob swing — a high arc over an opponent crowding the net. Charge sets height and depth; a weak lob sits up and gets smashed. |
| Space | Serve — hold to charge: more power serves deeper and faster but scatters more, so a fully cooked serve can fault |
| V | Toggle camera: top-down or behind-the-player pseudo-3D |
| Esc / P | Pause (resume, restart match, or quit) |
| M | Mute |
| R | Quit to menu |
Clean, planted hits go where you aim; hits at full stretch or on the run scatter. Swinging before a required bounce (the serve and its return) is a fault, and volleying from the kitchen still costs you the point. The net is physical: tape clips can tumble over and stay live, netted balls drop back and cost you the point. Balls touching a line are in.
Balls taken overhead (above 5.5 ft) become smashes — steeply punched and nearly unreturnable up close. The net posts are real: a wide ball can legally pass around the post at any height, and the banner will say so.
- Serve: diagonal, must land past the kitchen in the correct service court.
- Two-bounce rule: the serve and the return must each bounce before anyone may volley. (Your player automatically waits for these bounces.)
- Kitchen: volleying while standing in the non-volley zone is a fault — step back before taking balls out of the air.
- Scoring: rally scoring, first to 11, win by 2. Serve alternates each point.
Every rally ends with a banner telling you why.
node tests/rules.test.js # rules engine unit tests
node tests/smoke.test.js # headless full-game simulation
node tests/tournament.test.js # tournament flow: win advances the rung
node tests/ladder.test.js # ladder difficulty ascends (--sweep for all 8)
node tests/balance.test.js hard # bot vs quick-play difficulty (add 'charge')Open http://localhost:8000/#demo for an auto-playing demo (medium CPU,
auto-serve) — handy for eyeballing rendering changes.