Civic Arcade / 4-Act Campaign
Laser Loon: Quest for the State Flag
Pilot submission F277 Laser Loon on the Road to the Capitol. Battle rival flag redesigns, bureaucracy, and Minnesota folklore in this retro arcade campaign.
Cabinet Standby
FDR PORTFOLIO ARCADE v2.6Laser Loon: Quest for the State Flag
A Loon With a Legislative Agenda
Fly Laser Loon toward the State Capitol, take on rival flags, and blast through red tape. There are ice weapons and boss battles. The flag committee did not request these features.
WASD / ArrowsGlide Loon
Click / SpaceAim & Shoot
1 - 4Optic Arsenal
Laser Loon needs a bigger screen
It's built for a keyboard and a desktop-sized screen, and on a phone it's cramped. Save the link and play it on your laptop.
Meanwhile, on your phone
Optic Arsenal (1 - 4)
Aim crosshairs with cursor or touch. Switch between Ruby Eye Laser, Cyan Pulse, Aurora Borealis Wave, and Glacial Cryo-Mortar.
Haunting Loon Tremolo
Charge energy meter to 100% by scoring hits. Press U to unleash a screen-wide synthesized cryogenic loon cry shockwave!
MN Civic Power-Ups
Collect floating Tater Tot Hotdish (laser overcharge), Pronto Pups (invulnerability shield), and North Star crystals (multiplier surge).
Architecture & Engine Notes: Laser Loon
Laser Loon runs on a headless engine: a fixed-timestep loop advances the simulation at a steady rate and the renderer interpolates between steps, so gameplay does not change with the monitor's refresh rate.
The React component is a thin shell. Scores and controls are ordinary HTML over the canvas, which keeps them crisp, readable by assistive technology and separate from the game logic.
- Fixed timestep
- Physics advances in constant steps with an accumulator, giving the same result at 60Hz and 144Hz.
- Object pooling
- Projectiles and particles are recycled from pools to avoid garbage-collection pauses mid-game.
- HTML heads-up display
- Score and touch controls sit in an overlay outside the canvas, not drawn into it.