There are sensible hobbies.
You could learn Italian. Get really into gardening. Start doing cold plunges and talking about “optimising your morning”. Instead, I built a browser game where you fly around space turning hostile things into scrap.
That game is Space Defence.
At its core, it’s simple: survive, shoot, upgrade, try not to get vaporised. In practice, it quickly turns into a screen full of bullets, enemies, loot, effects, bad decisions, and the occasional moment where you think I’ve absolutely got this right before everything goes catastrophically wrong.
Which is exactly as it should be.
If you want to play it, it’s here: https://spacedefence.0ryant.com
What it is
Space Defence is a browser-based arcade space shooter built around surviving escalating waves of enemies while stacking enough upgrades to become a genuine problem for anything daft enough to drift into range.
There’s loot, there are upgrades, there’s escalating pressure, and there are runs where you go from “this is manageable” to “I have become an orbital incident” in about thirty seconds.
It’s not trying to be some po-faced, cinematic, prestige experience. It’s trying to be fun. Fast. Chaotic. A little bit unfair at times. Full of moments where things get just stupid enough to be brilliant.
Why I made it
Partly because I wanted to.
That sounds obvious, but loads of projects die because they get trapped in planning mode, architecture mode, or “this will be amazing once I’ve finished rebuilding half of it” mode. I wanted to make something live, playable, and real — not just another clever idea sat in a folder.
Also, there’s something refreshing about building software that answers the only question that really matters almost immediately:
is this actually fun or not?
You don’t get to hide behind process. You don’t get to explain away bad feel with a roadmap. If a mechanic is dead, it’s dead. If an upgrade feels good, you know it instantly. If the whole thing becomes a glorious over-the-top mess and people enjoy it, that’s signal.
What kind of game it is
If you like:
- arcade pressure
- frantic movement
- upgrades that can get a bit out of hand
- kill streaks
- loot
- the feeling of clawing back control from total nonsense
then you’ll probably get on with Space Defence.
It’s the sort of game where a run can start off careful and controlled, then spiral into full cosmic violence once the right pieces click into place. Half the fun is trying to ride that line between “strong build” and “I may have created a monster”.
Why I keep building it
Because it’s got character now.
It’s not just a test project or a tidy little prototype. It’s becoming its own thing. It has rhythm, chaos, rough edges, moments of brilliance, moments of absolute filth, and the occasional bug that arrives like it pays rent.
Good.
That means it’s alive.
I’d rather build something with pulse than something perfectly sterile. A game like this is supposed to have energy. It should feel like it wants you dead, but in a fun way.
Where it’s going
It’s still growing.
There’s more to add, more to refine, more to break, and more to make properly ridiculous. More enemies. More upgrades. More run variety. More moments where the screen becomes morally questionable.
That’s the appeal. It isn’t finished in the dead sense. It’s alive in the interesting sense.
Want to support it?
If you’ve played Space Defence and fancy chucking a cheeky little donation toward running costs, you can do that here:
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/0ryant
You can also use that to throw feature requests at me. No promises I’ll implement every mad idea people come up with, but if it’s good, funny, or chaotic enough, there’s every chance it ends up in the game.
So if you want to help keep the thing alive, help pay for hosting, or lobby for some deeply irresponsible feature, that’s the place to do it.
Final thought
Space Defence was never meant to sit in my head as “something I might do one day”. It’s here. It’s playable. It’s fun. It’s a bit mad. And every time I work on it, it becomes more itself.
Which is kind of the whole point.
If you haven’t played it yet, have a go:
https://spacedefence.0ryant.com
Just don’t act surprised when “one quick run” turns into a full session of trying to survive the void and turning your ship into a roaming space-based atrocity. Like this:
