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Life & fun · August 19, 2022

An HTML endless runner under 900 lines without frameworks or libraries

My wife and I recently submitted to a mobile game jam on Newgrounds (yes, it's still around). What started as a question of whether we could do it somehow morphed into whether we could do without so many of the seemingly needless complications rampant in our respective industries. My wife thus did all the art as traditional frame-by-frame animation (no puppets or tweening) and I preceded without a game engine. I did use a pre-processor that gives JS a Lisp syntax (Parenscript), because C-syntax is gross. We hope the end result, while definitely of small scope, will serve to inspire some…

An HTML endless runner under 900 lines without frameworks or libraries launched on August 19, 2022 with 16 votes, #891 of 3,307 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 4 years on.

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In plain words

An HTML endless runner game built with plain JavaScript in under 900 lines of code, without game engines or frameworks. The project features hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation and uses Parenscript, a Lisp-syntax preprocessor for JavaScript, to simplify development. Created for a game jam, it demonstrates how to build functional games while minimizing unnecessary complexity and tools, making it useful for developers interested in lightweight, minimal-dependency game development.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Parenscript source code for "Bondi's Heaps of Air", an endless runner for mobile web browsers. - trevorjay/Bondis-Heaps-of-Air

In the maker’s words, at launch

My wife and I recently submitted to a mobile game jam on Newgrounds (yes, it's still around). What started as a question of whether we could do it somehow morphed into whether we could do without so many of the seemingly needless complications rampant in our respective industries. My wife thus did all the art as…

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