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BetaGame

Penguin Rush

Belly-slide a penguin down an icy course that is new every race – dodge rocks, grab coins, boost past AI rivals. New, not yet played by others.

Play the beta

Opens at bsite.se/play/penguin-rush/

A penguin in a blue scarf boosts down an icy slope with a cyan glow behind it, two rival penguins ahead, snowy mountains, a lit village and green and purple northern lights in the sky.

Maturity

  1. Idea(completed)
  2. Prototype(completed)
  3. Alpha(completed)
  4. Beta(current stage)
  5. Promoted

About the project

Penguin Rush is a downhill arcade racer. Your penguin slides forward on its own; you steer between rocks, trees and ice, choose between the fast line and the safe one, and save the boost for the straights.

Every race gets a new course. It is assembled from reusable segments by a seeded generator, so two players with the same seed get exactly the same course, obstacles and weather – the foundation for racing friends later.

The depth is faked: the road is projected strip by strip onto a 2D Phaser scene, the way classic arcade racers did it, which keeps the game light enough for 60 frames per second on a phone.

Current state

What works

  • A procedural course built from thirteen segment types – bends, tunnels, frozen lakes, cliff edges, slaloms, jumps and boost lanes – and the same seed always gives the same course
  • Three hearts, coins that heal a little and charge the boost meter, a small hop, and a time penalty for going over a cliff edge
  • One to five AI rivals with personalities (safe, aggressive, collector, speedster, clumsy); difficulty changes reaction, precision and risk, never top speed
  • Snowstorms that cut visibility and push you sideways with gusts
  • Quick race, race vs AI with settings, four cosmetic penguins and a results screen
  • Keyboard, gamepad and a thumb stick with boost and hop buttons on phones; generated original art, sound effects and music
  • 60 FPS in the browser, with 175 unit tests and 34 browser tests

What isn’t finished

  • Racing with friends – rooms, room codes and shared courses – is planned but not built
  • One environment only, and tunnels are still plain blocks
  • Speed, steering and AI balance have not been tested by real players or on a real phone

Why is this project on BSite?

  • Early prototype

Penguin Rush was built in a day as a single-player vertical slice, and the feel has only been checked by the build itself. It lives here while it is played and tuned. With multiplayer rooms and a second environment it has what it needs to move to EverydayGames.

Screenshots

  • A snowstorm on the course – the road and trees fade into white fog while snowflakes blow across the screen and the penguin slides on.
  • The penguin approaches the finish – a checkered line across the road under a blue FINISH banner between two red posts.
  • The character select with four penguins – Pip in a blue scarf, Rosie in a pink bobble hat, Blaze in red goggles and Sprig in a green beanie.
  • The results table after a race, with place, time, coins, crashes and boosts for each racer and the player's row highlighted.

Development log

  1. Design spec, an 11-task plan and the single-player slice built from the Phaser 4 game template, with generated art and audio, and published in the lab at bsite.se/play/penguin-rush/.