by Grant Skinner

Tiny addictive Flash game

It never ceases to amaze me how much functionality you can pack into a tiny file with Flash. I started out writing a test for generating random asteroids, and it blossomed into a full-fledged game. Doom III it is not, but considering it’s less than 1kb in size (1020 bytes [UPDATE 04/24] now down to 1007 bytes), I think it’s pretty impressive, having time, points, levels, bonuses and penalties.

Game play is simple: Shoot (click) all of the asteroids before time runs out to progress to the next level. You’ll want to be fast and accurate – you get time bonuses at the end of each level, and are penalized for missed shots. Have fun, and post your best score / level in the comments below.


It was surprisingly fun and interesting building this game and fighting for every last byte. Has anyone else built any cool tiny games or projects they’d like to share?

Grant Skinner

The "g" in gskinner. Also the "skinner".

@gskinner

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42 Comments

  1. Rostislav Siryk February 10, 2005 at 11:02am

    My highest result is 33135.

    The simplier the game, the more addictive it is, right? 🙂

  3. Josh February 10, 2005 at 11:17am

    Sorry Rostislav, I just got 66200. Great game Grant!

  4. ryan February 10, 2005 at 11:18am

    I’d love to see the source code. Do you mind posting the fla file?

  5. Josh February 10, 2005 at 11:19am

    Darn it! – Should’ve posted 5 minutes earlier. Then I wouldn’t look as bad now… 😉

  6. Dave Ehlers February 10, 2005 at 11:20am

    level 9.. 465,500 – now for a high-score engine =)

  8. Stephen February 10, 2005 at 11:46am

    Jesus, you people aren’t human. This game could be quite a good misspent-youth detector 😉

  9. Anthony February 10, 2005 at 11:51am

    Level 15 – 2.522.650 – I’ve broken my mouse! 🙂

  10. Jeremy Rodgers February 10, 2005 at 12:19pm

    I can’t feel my left-button finger any more.

    Thanks! 171,900

  11. xion February 10, 2005 at 3:14pm

    228850 ^^ no more… my fingers are … oh i don’t know where they’re now…

    easily great 😉

  12. aran rhee February 10, 2005 at 3:59pm

    671,725. My tendons hurt…. I will have to rest a couple of days before trying again…

  13. JD on MX February 10, 2005 at 4:07pm

    1020 bytes

    1020 bytes: Microgame… Grant Skinner puts a workable Asteroids-type game into a kilobyte of SWF. Why, I remembah when we used to make a big to-do about a 5K HTML brochure…. ;-)…

  14. Josh February 10, 2005 at 4:24pm

    You might be interested in http://the5k.org/. It’s mostly DHTML, but it’s the same idea.

    You should post the code on this… I’d be interested to see if you managed to keep it clean as well as small. Usually you can only have one other the other.

  15. Owen van Dijk February 10, 2005 at 5:38pm

    Nice one Grant. I’ve once got into a competition making the smallest spinnable 3D cube in Flash vs DHTML. Guess who won: http://blog.owenvandijk.nl/2004/04/25d_worlds_smal.html

    🙂

  16. john February 10, 2005 at 8:15pm

    where the hell is a high score things? i had 1.5 mil, and the blocks floated off the screen and couldnt get back.

  17. Bitácora de Javier Gutiérrez Chamorro (Guti) February 11, 2005 at 8:49am

    Juego en Flash de menos de 1 Kb

    Via gskinner.com, veo un pequeñísimo juego en Flash, de solamente 1020 bytes, menos de 1 Kb.

    La apariencia, y e…

  18. Guti February 11, 2005 at 8:49am

    I’ve got 99700.

    Nice game!

  19. mray February 11, 2005 at 4:58pm

    510225… Level 9 I think…and my finger is still twitching

  20. Broly February 16, 2005 at 7:08am

    I’m at level 26 with 6116575 points…but my mouse and my finger starts to be tired 😀

    Very nice example of small & simple but funny game 🙂

  21. michaelt February 16, 2005 at 8:23am

    ok game…. 1430325

  22. ACE March 5, 2005 at 1:45pm

    i got 8325, where do i put the high score?

  23. Strille March 13, 2005 at 4:41pm

    That was great fun!

    I have made something similar; a 746 bytes snake game and a 1000 bytes tetris. Check them out at the bottom of this page: http://www.strille.net/tutorials/

    (source code available)

  24. Kit April 14, 2005 at 7:57am

    1049475.

    I quit ’cause I got bored 😛

  25. Dag April 24, 2005 at 12:24pm

    1 mil ha ha ( im gonna fell that in the mornin

  26. steffen July 21, 2005 at 11:54am

    this game is fun. 9933825 with the 2nd try!

  27. rooster September 19, 2005 at 5:04pm

    105625 on the very first try, not a bad game but as the old version, very addictive

  28. sly September 21, 2005 at 5:52am

    674800…

    Always good to see there’s still people who don’t care about 34 ghz Xbox with thermonuclear powered gpu and 6 To of hard disk, and still remember that the coolest thing is to beat some high scores on a good old arcade game !!

  29. Philip "pips" Seyfi September 27, 2005 at 3:39pm

    A arrived to 9,482,825 and then I have stoped – the game is endless, you have allways enught time to destroy all the asteroids 🙂

  30. huyzer January 5, 2006 at 4:57am

    Doh!

    4,937,950 Lost on Level 21.

    4,369,000 Won with 191 “seconds” left over.

    I’ve got the screen shots to prove it! 😛

    All played in 15 minutes, or so? This was my first, and last(?) try.

    Huy (sounds like “we”)

  33. Christian February 15, 2006 at 5:42am

    Although I don’t agree with Rostislav – I like complex games better – it amazes me, too, how much can be stuffed into so few kilobytes. Flash didn’t become so popular for nothing, I suppose.

    And an off-topic question:

    In this article I’ve noticed there’s a gap between the embedded Flash movie and the last sentence before it (“… in the comments below.”).

    When I embed Flash movies in my own blog, I, too, have this gap and I don’t know how to get rid of it.

    Does anyone have any idea on how to do that? If you do, please write to me using the contact form on my blog (footer line).

  34. flashMoran April 4, 2006 at 4:54pm

    well.. he-he… i got enough… GOT 11’032’600

    lvl 25 or 26… or smth.. it was hard…

    got to stop it… game was going too crazy…

    i built kinda a game couple a years ago… but it was not so everlasting… LOL

  35. Chexed April 30, 2006 at 9:20pm

    Very cool. That would be an awesome pre-loading screen for larger projects. Some constructive criticism; The low speed asteroids go so slow that I thought the game may of been bugged because a saw none on the screen for a moment. Then again I think fast, so maybe it wasn’t really going that slow.

    Actually, it’s the fact that part of the game is off-screen, because I just had it happen to me while it was a fast one, going at a angle which made it unavailble to see off-screen.

  36. dsaf May 5, 2006 at 9:40pm

    i got the best…i am the best…i got 188768 on level 6

  37. Osh... May 8, 2006 at 2:47am

    Hey!… the asteroid peices move outside the visible area… I was on Level 7 with 196225 and the screen was clear for a count of over 20, and then I lost!! – Grrr

  38. etaine December 13, 2006 at 5:46pm

    lev 14 – 2,027,075

    my hand hurts like hell though!! I like the game

  39. Javi March 17, 2007 at 4:01pm

    Please make a Wii version!!!

    It is perfect to play with wiimote

  40. Jim September 28, 2007 at 4:49am

    1.1 million .. I don’t fancy playing any longer to beat the 11 million record.. next time make the game a challenge of skill rather than endurance please 🙂

  41. oyunlar November 2, 2008 at 2:58pm

    wooouww thanks you all the game beatiful

  42. Caillou April 29, 2010 at 12:25pm

    Please make a Wii version!!!oyunlar

    It is perfect to play with wiimote..

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