LittleJS
LittleJS - The Tiny Fast JavaScript Game Engine
🚂 All aboard!
LittleJS is a fast, lightweight, and fully open source HTML5 game engine designed for simplicity and performance. Its small footprint is packed with a comprehensive feature set including hybrid rendering, physics, particles, sound, and input handling. The code is clean and well documented with some fun examples to get you started right away. Choo-Choo!
🚀 Join the LittleJS Game Jam
The Second Annual LittleJS Game Jam will take place From Oct 3 to Nov 3! Unleash your creativity and develop amazing games using the LittleJS game engine. 🕹️🎮 Sign up today and get more info about the jam on itch.io!
About LittleJS Engine
LittleJS is a small but powerful game engine with many features and no dependencies.
✨ Graphics
- Super fast sprite and tile map rendering engine with WebGL2
- Update and render 100,000+ sprites at a solid 60fps
- Apply Shadertoy compatible shaders for post-processing effects
- Robust particle effect system and effect design tool
🔊 Audio
- Positional sound effects with wave files, mp3s, or ZzFX
- Use ZzFX sound effect generator to play sounds without asset files
- Music with mp3, ogg, wave, or ZzFXM
🎮 Input
- Comprehensive input handling for keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touch
- On screen touch gamepad designed for mobile devices
💥 Physics
- Robust arcade physics system with collision handling
- Very fast collision and raycasting for tile maps
- Full Box2d support using super fast wasm build of box2d.js
🚀 Flexibility
- Compatible with all modern web browsers and on mobile devices
- Support for TypeScript and Modules with example projects for both
- Ideal for size coding competitions like js13kGames, starter project builds to a 7KB zip
- Open Source with the MIT license so it can be used for anything you want forever
🛠️ And more…
- Node.js build system
- 2D vector math library
- Debug primitive rendering system
- Bitmap font rendering and built in engine font
- Medal tracking system with Newgrounds support
How To Use LittleJS
To get started download the latest LittleJS package from GitHub or install via npm: npm install littlejsengine
You need to run a local web server to run LittleJS games during development! You may see a console error like “The image element contains cross-origin data.” Don’t panic, it’s easy to fix! If you are using Visual Studio Code there is a Live Preview Extension that will handle this for you automatically. Another option is to setup a simple local web server like http-server via npm.
- Watch this GitNation talk to hear more about LittleJS works and get some tips on how to use it.
- Learn how to make a simple game from scratch with The Breakout Tutorial.
- Make a ski game with LittleJS - Check out this tutorial by eoinmcg that shows how to make a pixel art style game.
- LittleJS Engine Quick Reference Sheet - This cheat sheet can help you get started.
- Check out The Little JS FAQ for more help getting started.
- Join our vibrant community on Discord to get help, share your projects, and collaborate with others!
Examples
These demos are for both learning and using as starter projects to create your own games.
- Starter Project - Clean example with only a few things to get you started
- Breakout - Block breaking game with post-processing effects
- Puzzle Game - Match 3 puzzle game with HD rendering and high score tracking
- Platformer - Platformer/shooter with level data from Tiled Editor
- Box2D Demo - Box2D plugin demonstration and testbed
- Stress Test - Max sprite/object test and music system demo
- Particle System Designer - Particle system editor and visualizer
- Example Browser - Live example browser with all examples
Builds
To easily include LittleJS in your game, you can use one of the pre-built js files.
- littlejs.js - The full game engine with debug mode available
- littlejs.release.js - The engine optimized for release builds
- littlejs.min.js - The engine in release mode and minified
- littlejs.esm.js - The engine exported as a module with debug mode available
- littlejs.esm.min.js - The engine exported as a minified module in release mode
To rebuild the engine you must first run npm install to setup the necessary npm dependencies. Then call npm run build to build the engine.
The starter example project includes a node js file build.js that compresses everything into a tiny zip file using Google Closure, UglifyJS, and ECT Zip.
Games Made With LittleJS
Here are a few of the many amazing games created with LittleJS…
- Space Huggers - Rogulike platformer shoot-em-up game with procedural levels. by KilledByAPixel
- Undergrowth - An interactive music videogame for the band Squid. by KilledByAPixel
- The Way of the Dodo - Single button platformer. JS13k 5th place winner! by repsej
- 204Snake! - A puzzle game that combines 2048 with snake. LittleJS Jam 1st place winner! by Sodoj and Shai-P
- GATOR - Retro platformer shooter game where you rescue animals. LittleJS Jam 2nd place winner! by eoinmcg
- A Hedgehog’s search - Adventure game staring a hedgehog. LittleJS Jam 3rd place winner! by willsm1111
- Wendol Village - Warcraft inspired RTS game. by sanojian
- Dead Again - Top down survial horror. by sanojian & repsej
- Isletopia - Relaxing strategy game of greenifying barren islands. by Gamex Studio
- Tetrimals - A puzzle game mixing Tetris with animals. by nixn
- Watch the Pups - The aim of the game is to take care of some puppies. by masa
- LittleJS Game Jam Results - Check out all the games from the first LittleJS Game Jam!
