I'm a Web Developer Who Built 28 Browser Games — Here's What Surprised Me

Last month, I challenged myself: build browser games using nothing but vanilla JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas. No Unity. No Godot exports. No game frameworks. Just the same tools I use to build web apps. 28 games later, I want to share what surprised me most about the transition from web dev to game dev. Why a Web Developer Would Do This I've been building web tools and micro-SaaS products for a while. But I kept noticing something: the feedback loop in game dev is instant. You change a number, and the game feels different. In web dev, you change a CSS value and... the button is 2px to the left. I wanted that instant feedback. And I wanted to see how far vanilla JS could go. The Tech Stack (Embarrassingly Simple) HTML5 Canvas for rendering Vanilla JavaScript for everything else Vite for bundling itch.io for distribution No React. No Three.js. No Phaser. Just ctx.fillRect() and vibes. 5 Things That Surprised Me 1. The Game Loop Changes How You Think In web dev, your code runs in response t