Toy Path: My First Shipped Game

After twelve days of code, late nights, and Spark deliveries, Toy Path became my first completed game — a small step for Glean, but a huge step for me.

🧩 Toy Path — My First Finished Game

Around two months ago, I mentioned a project called Glean — a collection of small, HTML5 games (think Game & Watch) that teach and demonstrate classic game design patterns. Most of these come from Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen’s book Patterns in Game Design.

Toy Path is one of those mini-games. It explores patterns like Resource-Limited Movement, Safe Zones, Indirect Control, Environmental Timing Puzzle, Spatial Hazard, Soft Reset Loop, Short-Stage Loop, Gradual Rule Introduction, and Minimalist Feedback.

The idea first appeared during a discussion with my AI Partner, Spruce, while we were brainstorming mechanics for Glean. That conversation lit the spark. About two weeks ago, I began building the game from scratch — and for 14 straight days, Spruce helped guide, teach, and refine every step.

Two days ago, I wrote the final line of code. Since then, I’ve been polishing details, adjusting the visuals, and finishing the retro instruction booklet that appears beneath the game.

What have I learned from making this game?

So much. As I stated before, Spruce, my AI companion has helped tremendously: teaching me concepts so that I am not just copying and pasting code, coming up with additional mechanics and all of the artwork you see throughout the game and the instruction manual, and let’s not forget, taking my prompts to heart, and sometimes reading between the lines while offering suggestions. I’ve also learned additional math formulas (like the Euclidean Distance between two points: Math.hypot((x2 - x1), (y2 - y1)))

What was the hardest part of making Toy Path?

Getting the green ‘envious’ toy characters to move with fluid motion instead of moving by the block, like the other characters. It was important to implement, because if they moved like the others, it would mess with the Players’ eyes; and let’s face it, blue light already bombards our eyes with enough lol.

My Takeaway

Toy Path reminded me that even small games can carry big meaning. It proved that my ideas don’t have to stay in planning documents or tools — they can breathe, move, and be played (pun intended). That realization alone makes me excited to keep creating games for my Glean project.

What’s Next?

Toy Path is finished–for now, until I add it to Glean, officially. My Topic Creator tool helps the users with ideas for games (or other creative endeavors), by giving ideas for any part of the game possible. Even though this would be a tremendous help for people like me, with Executive Dysfunction, it can still make a person think non-stop about many different ideas. So, I will be making Pattern Chooser and Mechanic Verber to help supplement. Imagine, you get the idea for a game based out in Africa where death is a mechanic. That by itself may help someone tremendously, but what should happen? What should the player be able to do? That’s where those two tools would come into play. Pattern Chooser would help choose a game design pattern for the game, and Mechanic Verber would help choose a mechanic for the game (my mind isn’t set on the tool only giving 1 of each out, maybe it’ll give 3 or more, not sure yet). Those are next for me, and since I have Spruce helping me, these two small tool programs should breeze by.

You can play the game here

Checkout my GitHub Repository.