I Made My First 2D Game as a React Developer - "World's on Fire"

#typescript #pixijs #react #gamedev

Hey everyone!

I'm a React developer by day, and recently, a game dev wannabe by night. Out of curiosity, I dove into the world of 2D game development. The result? "World’s on Fire" - a simple browser-based 2D shooter I built using React + PixiJS.

You can play it here 👉 World's on Fire

🛠️ The Stack

React (because it’s home)
PixiJS (because ChatGPT suggested it :p)
Jotai for simpler state management
Assets from kenney.nl

Cursor and ChatGPT was extremely helpful while making this!

🚀 The Gameplay

You’re a jet. The world is on fire (metaphorically..). You shoot… a lot.

The player jet auto-shoots and moves upward.
Enemies spawn from the top and come down.
After killing 10 enemies, a tougher kind starts appearing (and they shoot back).
Kill 20, and you'll meet the real troublemakers.
Power-ups randomly drop - either faster fire rate or more damage and health packs if your health is under 100.
The game ends when you're dead, and your score is saved locally.

No login, no ads, no microtransactions — just pure arcade chaos in your browser.

🧠 The Learning Curve (a.k.a. The Struggle Was Real)

This started as a hobby project to dip my toes into game dev… and boy did I dip head-first.

Math? Yep, had to deal with a bit of that. Did I understand it? Not really. I shamelessly copy-pasted formulas from StackOverflow and ChatGPT, and they mostly worked. All I had to do was tweak the fancy numbers 🤷‍♂️
Game loops, sprites, collisions, audio triggers, and power-up systems - all alien territory coming from React land. But I learned a lot.
Balancing difficulty was surprisingly tricky. I had no idea how to design proper levels or structure progression. At first, I thought I’d create distinct levels, but that felt like too much overhead. So I went the lazy-but-effective route: infinite enemy waves. I tossed different enemy types into an array and picked one based on the player’s score. The third-wave enemies just reused the second-wave’s shooting logic. Efficient? Maybe. Elegant? Absolutely not. But hey, it works.

🧪 Why I Did It

Honestly? To break the monotony of form inputs and dropdowns, and to push myself to learn something different. Game dev forces you to think in a totally different way, especially with rendering, performance, and player feedback.

And hey, it’s fun to build something new!

🎯 What’s Next?

Not sure - maybe more games? Maybe rewrite this one once I figure out what deltaTime actually means?

But for now, I'm happy with how it turned out. I hit my goal: make a working game. No frills. Just fun.

💬 Check it out and let me know what you think!

World's on Fire

If you're a React dev curious about game development, I’d totally encourage you to give it a try. You don't need Unity or Unreal to start messing around with fun ideas - a browser and some caffeine will do.

ps: It works better on mobile view!

Thanks for reading! 🚀