Concept
I’ve always been fascinated by spooky stories, yet wanted to create something more lighthearted than a typical horror game. That is how I ended up making a short, click-based project in which the player buys a haunted house at a bargain price and must purge it of unwanted guests—literally ghosts—to unlock its true potential. From the outset, I imagined a game with a touch of urgency: each wave of ghosts adds just enough pressure to keep your heart rate up, but not so much as to be punishing or relentlessly scary. The result is a game that blends frantic clicking with a fun, eerie atmosphere and a simple storyline that sets the stakes clearly: fail, and the ghosts overwhelm you; succeed, and the house is yours, free of all things that go bump in the night.
To cement that narrative, I designed three distinct levels, each with its own flavor of tension. Level 1’s stationary ghosts ease the player in, Level 2’s moving ghosts ramp up speed and require more hits, and Level 3 features a boss ghost who teleports unpredictably to keep the player on their toes. Across these levels, the fundamental goal never changes—click fast, or you risk running out of time—but the variety of ghost behavior and the gradually intensifying difficulty create a neat progression. The final reward is a bright, newly revealed house, signifying the end of the haunting and the triumph of actually getting to live in your newly bought property.
How the Project Works
The code behind this game employs a simple state machine to orchestrate its various parts. I found this approach more intuitive than cramming all logic into one giant loop. Whenever the player transitions from, say, the INTRO state to LEVEL1, the script calls startLevel(level), which resets the timer, spawns the appropriate ghosts, and ensures there’s no carry-over from earlier states. Here is a small excerpt that illustrates how the game transitions from one level to the next or ends if all ghosts are defeated:
if (ghosts.length === 0) {
if (level === 1) {
state = "LEVEL2";
startLevel(2);
} else if (level === 2) {
state = "LEVEL3";
startLevel(3);
} else if (level === 3) {
state = "WIN";
ghostSound.stop();
victorySound.play();
}
}
I’m particularly proud of how coherent each ghost type’s logic is, thanks to object-oriented design. I broke down the ghosts into three classes—StaticGhost, MovingGhost, and BossGhost—so each can handle its own movement and hit requirements. For instance, the MovingGhost class includes velocities in both x and y directions. It updates its position each frame and bounces off the canvas edges, which felt more elegant than scattering if-conditions all over the main draw() loop. This design choice also eases extension: if I someday add a new ghost that splits into two smaller ghosts on hit, I can isolate that behavior in yet another class.
Moreover, I love the inclusion of sound elements, as it heightens the atmosphere. The ghostly background audio starts the moment you tackle Level 1, giving a sense of stepping into a haunted property. On every successful hit, a short “blast” sound triggers, reinforcing the feedback loop for players clicking in a hurry. When the boss ghost is defeated, the game transitions to a “WIN” screen with a triumphant sound, showing off the newly purified house. These little touches bring a pleasant cohesiveness to the otherwise basic act of clicking on sprites and add a layer of fun that purely visual feedback might not achieve.
Areas for Improvement & Challenges Faced
While I’m delighted with the final result, I definitely noticed some spots that could be enhanced through further iteration. First, game balancing was tricky. If I set the time limits too high, the game lost its tension because players could leisurely pick off ghosts. If I made them too strict, new players often found themselves losing before they fully grasped the ghost patterns. I settled on modest values for each level, but it still demands some quick reflexes—if someone isn’t used to rapid clicking, they might find the default times a bit harsh. Introducing difficulty modes, or maybe timed boosts that freeze the ghosts for a short period, would give me more fine control over that difficulty curve and cater to different skill levels.
Another challenge was ensuring that state transitions stayed seamless. At one point, I had ghosts from Level 1 lingering into Level 2, causing the dreaded “two waves at once” bug. The fix involved carefully resetting arrays and timers inside startLevel(level) and confirming no leftover references were carried over. Though it took some debugging, it taught me the importance of thorough housekeeping when cycling through game phases—particularly in an experience that uses back-to-back waves, each with its own unique ghost behaviors. If I expand the project in the future, perhaps adding more levels or extra ghost abilities, I’ll rely heavily on these same organizational principles to keep the code from becoming unwieldy and prone to surprises. I feel the game meets my initial ambition: to craft a short, fun, and spooky challenge that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It balances straightforward gameplay—just point-and-click to vanquish ghosts—with enough variety to keep the three levels distinct and interesting. As I continue refining or building upon the concept, I plan to experiment with new ghost types or reward systems that push the idea even further, but I’m proud of how the current version stands on its own as a playful haunted-house journey.