Porkise - Faux-3D Pig Runner

[solid blaze]

🐷

Just shipped my latest game built in Phaser!

It's a kid-friendly infinite runner with perspective-based lane switching.

Play it here: https://weeangusmcdread.itch.io/porkise

Technical highlights:

• 7-lane system with perspective scaling
• Obstacles scale based on depth to create faux-3D effect
• Config-driven obstacle spawning with different patterns (single, wall, scatter, slide)
• Stomach depletion mechanic tied to player speed
• Mobile + desktop input abstraction (touch controls with lane snapping on mobile, free movement on desktop)

Built for a kindergarten demo scheduled in March 2026 - wanted something simple, colorful, and immediately understandable for young kids.

Used a lot of lessons learned from my previous runner game (Surf Boy) and built this in about 3 weeks using composition + config patterns instead of inheritance.

Would love feedback, especially on the lane switching feel and overall game balance! 🐷

[faint verge]

hey my man! just a few quick (non sugarcoated ) thoughts I had playing for a few minutes:

• it is way (WAY) too difficult
• i like the piggy start screen, game over screen could look a little nicer (red + black Game Over text a bit too evil feeling)
• time from stuff appearing to you needing to act is very, very small
• its not that easy to to grasp in which lane something actually is
• I expected to be able to jump over stuff as well
• tractors changing lanes is evil and too much
• it's not immediately apparent what items are good and no good (i thought green apple had to be good but..it wasnt?)
• good items and bad being in the same place is confusing, be clear on whats good or no!

[solid blaze]

Thanks! I will take that to heart. Game was intended for Kids tutorial how to make games. Or how games are made.

TBH for me it wasn`t that hard I was even thinking it is TOO easy BUT I guess this is to be expected when i play tested it over and over... It eventually became easier.

Yeah for the food- full right. I was actually thinking to make it rotten apple like brownish with a bug popping out. Maybe I will change it to a can... Like pig eating soemthing it shouldnt.

I will add back the white lines I use in debug mode back. That should ease the pain with lanes.

[solid blaze]

😄

[solid blaze]

OK fixes pushed... Phew.

• tweaked spawner so now you have spawn groups per distance ranges (red tractor is still there but now you got blue tractor too that is static)
• added dashed lines to show where the paths go (solid line was too overwhelming in the end)
• food now is just food. Eat it to fuel pig
• added unused previously GameOver screen
• added rough instructions on game start

[solid blaze]

@faint verge pushed on itch update 😉 would be much obliged if you give it second chance

[faint verge]

If you inquire good sir
Update:

• the lane lines help clarity, but destroy the illusion of forward movement (not sure if there are quick fixes for that. maybe with having 2 sets of lines for each lane strip, displaying only one set at a time and then switch or something)
• even on base speed, its still extremely quick. From an object appearing to it hitting you takes around 350ms. in that time your eyes have to see what it is, your brain has to comprehend if its good or bad, take a course of action and your fingers have to execute on it. at worst even multiple jumps in a direction. I find that absolutely brutal. having spent 100s of hours playing and testing my own runner, I thought I should be good enough to play a game made for kids. That was wrong 😄 You must be a runner specialist!
• new countdown explanation: good to explain, too quick to really read and understand it, wouldnt wanna make it slower either though. I'd keep the time from game over to retry super short, quick retry is king. either show explanation also at start screen (everybody can read at their own pace and just start when they're done reading, good UX!) or also when ingame
• good food change!
• piggy still runs out of pig juice pretty quickly!

[solid blaze]

Thank you for your time 😄 hm so dashes would have to move along like in turbo racing... I think its doable tho.

For retry i got quite an issue. I tried to rely on phaser scene restart but it breaks the game. hence start- end - press Q to go back to MM- start over again.

Good that base speed is just one value i can tweak 😄 Maybe I will add a wy to set iitial speed/ difficulty..

[faint verge]

I had a suspicion regarding the difficulty thing (I could not believe what I played is what you played). watch video to see the results

tldr; game speed is dependant on framerate

[cobalt quartz]

When you restart a scene the constructor etc doesn’t get called again, so make sure any starting values for your scene are in your create method

[solid blaze]

Thanks for the tip! Gonna take a closer look at that

[solid blaze]

Hm good catch... Need to think how to fix that. probably its pretty easy like depend on time delta time updates instead of just phaser update that relies on raw delta if i reckon correctly

[solid blaze]

😄

[solid blaze]

OK I will try to drop update somewhere tomorrow in the morning before I start work.

[solid blaze]

ok framerate happens to be bit more tricky than i thought 😄