About this project

Invisable Playground is home to an unofficial fan remake of the 1983 arcade game Elevator Action. It was made for learning and for fun, by a fan who wanted to play it again in a browser, on any device, without an emulator.

How it was made

The game is written from scratch in TypeScript. It uses no game framework, just a small engine built on the browser's Canvas 2D API, and it runs at the arcade's native 256×224 resolution. All of the artwork is original pixel art, and every sound effect is generated in code with the Web Audio API.

The game logic is kept separate from the drawing code so it can be tested on its own. Automated tests check that every generated building can be completed, across hundreds of different layouts, and play thousands of random inputs through the game looking for bugs.

The original game

Elevator Action was released by Taito in 1983. It stood out among arcade games of its time for letting the player control the elevators directly and for its tense, stealthy pace. This remake aims to recreate how it plays, not to copy it: it uses none of the original code, graphics or sound.

Credits

Elevator Action is © 1983 Taito Corporation. This site and the remake are not affiliated with or endorsed by Taito.

Questions, bug reports or feedback are welcome on the contact page.