arcade HUMANS VS AI .IO - SPACESHOOTER

[creatorcuffee]

https://www.humansvsai.io

 

Built a browser space shooter with Phaser 3 + React — sharing my stack and a few lessons

I've been building Humans VS AI.IO, a browser-based space shooter with a roguelite upgrade system and multi-phase boss fights, and wanted to share the stack and a few things I learned along the way.

Stack:

• Phaser 3 for the core game engine/rendering
• React for UI layers (menus, HUD overlays, upgrade selection)
• Deployed on Vercel
• Built primarily using AI-assisted development (Claude Code) — happy to talk about that workflow if anyone's curious how that's changed my process as a solo dev

A few things that came up building this:

• Mobile scaling was harder than expected — getting Phaser's canvas to actually fill the viewport correctly across different phone sizes (not just one reference device) took several iterations, especially around safe-area insets and avoiding 100vh issues with mobile browser toolbars
• Balancing procedural obstacle patterns — building wave patterns that feel varied but always leave a guaranteed dodgeable path turned out to be a genuinely tricky design problem, especially once I added randomized elements (replicating obstacles, multiple pattern types)
• Performance with layered glow/neon effects — learned the hard way that live blur filters per-object tank FPS fast once obstacle density goes up; switching to pre-baked glow textures made a big difference

The game itself: fight through wave-based combat, build out your loadout with common/rare/legendary upgrades between waves, and face down boss fights against a growing roster of AI-parody characters (OGPT, Claudus, Eyes of Gemini, and others).

Final boss is currently Copilotron. More will be added. Keep in mind this game is satire so take it for what it is.

Play it at humansvsai.io — would genuinely appreciate feedback from other devs, especially on performance or anything that feels janky on your device/browser.