DEFENDER of the favicon

By: Derek Yu

On: July 19th, 2008

Well, someone’s finally gone and put a game in a favicon. Mathieu ‘p01’ Henri’s DEFENDER of the favicon is a simple remake of Eugene Jarvis’s classic shoot ‘em up. It’s 16×16, making it even smaller than the 18×18 games at guimp. It’s also in a friggin’ favicon.

The game works in Opera and Firefox, although Firefox 3 causes the game to hiccup. It doesn’t work at all in any version of Internet Explorer.

Mathieu is also responsible for the 4k Javascript FPS 3D TOMB II.

(Source: LaughingCrow, via Lithium Leaf)

TIGdb: Entries for DEFENDER of the favicon_, _3D TOMB II

Posted in Action, Browser Games | Tags: MathieuHenri

John Roth

Uh… I’m sorry, I feel really stupid but how do I play this game? I can’t find a link or anything….
Derek

It’s in the favicon, so just look to the left of your browser’s address bar. Hit “N” to start!
http://sophiehoulden.com GirlFlash

words cannot express how awesome that is…

now I want to make games hidden in really unlikely places… system tray anyone?
crackers

There’s a system tray Space Invaders out there somewhere. It’s pretty good for something that runs in your system tray.
Radnom

I found this game pretty unplayable because up and down kept scrolling the window. Also the limited resolution meant it was very hard to tell what was an enemy and what wasn’t and often by the time something came onto the screen you’d already collided with it.

… that and the tiny size. my eyes hurt.

It’s definitely more of a ‘cool experiment’ than an enjoyable game, and for that I recommend playing it (a pretty amazing feat!), but it’s not particularly fun.
Lim-Dul

You can use WASD instead of the arrow keys if the page doesn’t fit on one screen for ya.

I agree that there are better games out there but for a project that has taken only 3 days to make and one that uses a pretty unknown technique of scripting favicons this is still amazing and should be praised for that…

Rate things by what they are meant to be – e.g. you wouldn’t give a fork low notes because you can’t eat soup with it too well.
crackers

Favicons or 32×32 or lower resolutions should be the next TIG Compo.
Baltirow

Game-wise, my pet peeve with this one is that the enemies only appear if they fit entirely on the ‘screen’. That combined with the speed of the ship, which is much higher than necessary, makes it all that more likely you’ll bump into an enemy than hit it.

Still, it does convey the right feeling as it does feel like your flying an awesome spacecraft over a city being invaded. Using only 16×16 that is pretty comendable!
http://www.0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

for everyone having problems with it, just press ENTER to play is as a normal game in a javascript canvas on the page, it’s also like 2x bigger
BroodKiller

—-
now I want to make games hidden in really unlikely placesâ€¦ system tray anyone?
—-

Application title bar icon anyone? Also, I know it may sound stupid, but maybe cursor game is doable?
Trotim

3D TOMB II/DEFENDER of the favicon sucks pretty hard as a game (as program it’s awesome).
http://www.p01.org Mathieu ‘p01’ Henri

Glad to see some of my “work” featured here.

Now that this stunt is out of the door, I’m considering more subtle uses of the favicon e.g. as a radar, road sign, inventory, bonus selector ( Ã la SMB,SMK )

Any suggestions as to what I should do to make games that are actually fun and not just coder pr0n ?

**Baltirow**: the enemies can be partially visible. It may not be obvious in 16×16 but they are. Honest.
Baltirow

@Mathieu
My apologies for that bad call. I guess it was the (relatively) high speed of the ship that made it feel for me as if they popped out of nowhere.

A small improvement for this game would be if you would see some visual feedback when you hit an enemy (small blip explosion or some such).

About new games, I think the easiest way to add more gameplay is by using that other dimension more, perhaps an exploration game or a platformer?
Onymous

Super Mario Bros is made up of ~16×16 tiles per screen so if every tile is a single pixel, you could do mario. movement would of course be a little off, but hey.
Bumble Bee

Thats one of the worst site layouts I’ve seen. Just unusable.
ObamaFisa

Bumble Bee is correct.
http://www.p01.org Mathieu ‘p01’ Henri

Could you be more specific about the usability issues ? It’s just a page in a single column — no real need for anything more complex — about the game. It’s rendered as intended in Opera 9.2 & 9.5, Firefox 2 & 3, Safari 3 and *pretty* close in IE 7 & 8.

**Baltirow:** Oh! thanks for the advices. Duh, what was I thinking ?
Phasma Felis

??? What’s wrong with the site layout? Looks like a bog-standard column of text to me, with a bit of a tasteful background.

Or did you mean the “layout” of “game in a favicon”? Usability wasn’t really the point of that…
Bumble bee

http://www.guimp.com/
http://www.p01.org Mathieu ‘p01’ Henri

:D Oh, so nothing to do with *DEFENDER of the favicon* or any of _my_ site(s).
Sergio

I second the awesome idea of icon sized (32×32 or less) games for the next TIGS comp.
http://www.0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

very cool stuff Mathieu, now i want a favicon Sinistar remake.
Ok, i was joking about that :P

Can you share some of the code to convert the javascript canvas to a png usable as favicon?
Lim-Dul

I think you can view it all with the “View source” function on the game’s page. =)