Dead End Loop

**Description:**

Dead End Loop is a fast-paced arcade dodge game where Trump Baby gets squeezed into a soft water pipe and rolls back and forth, flipping direction with SPACE or a tap to dodge "dilemmas" coming at you from all directions — tariff retaliation, judicial pushback, partisan polarization, inflation backlash, and more. Getting hit costs one heart; lose all three and it's game over. Survive the countdown to clear a level, and dodge more while staying unharmed to earn up to three stars.

Levels feature horizontal, vertical, diagonal and ring-shaped tracks across eight classic stages with escalating difficulty. There is also an Endless ring-survival mode, a "6-Second Hero" crown challenge, and the special "Sea Commander" stage, where fists smash dilemmas from the ring center while eggs are fired straight at you. Along the way, grab absurd power-ups like Cola, TACO, Panda, Coin, Donut, Tissue, Blame Shift and the Crown to boost speed, shrink pipes and rings, freeze dilemmas, or become briefly invincible.

With a hand-drawn UI, satirical political humor, Chinese and English language support, automatic browser-language detection, manual language switching, and local progress saving, the game runs directly in your browser — no installation required, just a quick reflex challenge whenever you have a moment.

**Involvement:**

The game's theme and character concept were inspired by Bilibili creator **“麻薯波比呀”**, while the core idea of the ring-based dodge mechanic was inspired by a simple circular dodge game I came across on Reddit. I no longer remember the original game's title, but its basic concept sparked the idea for this project.

I handled the game's design and development, including adapting those inspirations into the final gameplay, designing the track system, power-ups, stacking mechanics, level progression, difficulty and star rules, creating and curating the visual assets and characters, writing the Chinese/English copy and Trump-inspired one-liners, and iterating through repeated playtesting and balancing. I also led the quality testing and final acceptance to ensure the game was playable, stable and polished.