Although flash games have passed away, there is still a significant demand for browser-based and cross-platform games. Regardless of whether you actively play them yourself or not, more and more games from professional and independent developers are appearing every day.
This phenomenon is largely due to HTML5 games, which have filled the gap to keep up with these enthusiastic gamers. Furthermore, thanks to advances in technology and new frameworks, HTML5 game development has reached great heights, allowing multiplayer experiences, 3D graphics, and much more! It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that playing games is now just as viable through a browser as it is on many other devices!
Assuming that this sounds like an exciting prospect for you as a game developer, in this guide we are going to dive deeper into the topic of HTML5 game development and briefly explain how you can create your own games! Sit back, relax, and get ready to improve your game development skills in a whole new way!
What is HTML5? This is a complicated question. There’s the official definition of HTML5, which simply means the latest version of HTML (the markup language used worldwide to build websites), and the more hyped definition (what most people understand when HTML5 is mentioned), which is all the “New” web technology features that have emerged in the last few years (JavaScript APIs like Canvas or WebAudio, HTML semantic tags, etc.).
For our purpose, we will use parts of the two. HTML5 is HTML in its latest version, which contains a whole set of interesting features that make web technologies an open standard with endless possibilities by combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The presence of HTML, along with all these superpowers that go beyond creating a simple website, allows us to create, among other things, games . These are HTML5 games.
Building blocks
The basic building blocks of an HTML5 game are the web:
HTML
CSS
JavaScript.
Similar to what happens with HTML5, when people talk about CSS3, they’re usually referring to the new stuff that comes with the latest CSS specifications, but in a similar fashion, CSS3 is just the latest CSS. Ignoring the semantics of these definitions for a second and thinking about the hyped up versions of these terms, we may also need to build HTML5 games:
HTML5 (JavaScript API)
CSS3.
With the above, you can create great games that will work in modern web browsers on mobile devices and computers, but some games may require more features, so you may want to add more building blocks.
For example, you can create 3D games. In this case, there is also WebGL, which is a JavaScript API for rendering 2D and 3D graphics in the browser using the GPU for improved performance.
