@ben @jess This is a submission for the June Solstice Game Jam

I'll be honest, I wasn't sure what to build for this jam. The theme is wide open and I kept going back and forth between something silly and something that actually meant something.
Then I started reading about Juneteenth and I just thought... this is it. This is the one.

What I Built:
March to Freedom is a top-down arcade survival game where you lead a growing group of marchers to freedom. Your player follows your mouse across the field. Scattered marchers join your group when you reach them. Shadow enemies try to stop you. Collect lanterns to charge special abilities. Reach 250 marchers to win.
Every 50 marchers you rescue unlocks a real story card about Juneteenth history - the 1865 announcement in Galveston, the first celebrations, how the tradition spread across America, the Texas state holiday in 1980, and finally the 2021 federal holiday.

Play it here:

The Idea :
I wanted the gameplay to mirror the theme. You're not fighting - you're gathering. You're not destroying. you're protecting. The goal isn't to kill the most enemies, it's to bring the most people along with you.
The shadow forces representing oppression get faster at night (day/night cycle tied to the solstice theme), and your lanterns symbols of hope and light are what charge your abilities and restore your strength.
It's a small metaphor but I think it works.

How to Play:

Mouse moves your leader directly (1:1 cursor tracking)
WASD works too if your mouse leaves the canvas
Tab cycles through your 5 abilities
Space activates the selected ability

Abilities: each charged by collecting lanterns:
AbilityWhat it doesShieldRipple wave pushes all enemies backSpeedMove faster for 3 secondsTorchFire projectiles in 8 directionsFreezeSlow all enemies for 5 secondsRallyPull all scattered followers to you instantly

Enemy types:
Scout - small and fast, 1 hit with torch
Heavy - big and slow, hits harder, needs 2 torch hits
Boss - appears every 100 marchers, takes 3 torch hits, drops 2 lanterns when defeated

Day/Night cycle - the field darkens every 30 seconds. Enemies spawn faster and move quicker at night. Lanterns glow brighter. Survive until dawn.

How I Built It
Pure HTML5 Canvas and Web Audio API. No libraries, no game engine, no frameworks. Just a single HTML file.
I started with the mouse tracking and immediately ran into the classic problem - getBoundingClientRect() returning the wrong dimensions before layout settles. The fix was wrapping everything in a setTimeout(100ms) and reading canvas.offsetWidth once after layout was done, then fixing those values for the entire session. No dynamic resizing, no device pixel ratio scaling - just simple fixed coordinates. That solved every rendering issue I had.
Audio is all synthesized using oscillators and gain nodes. Each sound type has its own function - sfxCollect, sfxBossDie, sfxNight etc. I kept them separate rather than in a big object because it was easier to tweak individual sounds that way.
The game loop uses delta time throughout so it runs consistently regardless of frame rate. I spent more time on this than I expected - getting the followers chain movement to feel right took a few iterations. They follow in sequence (each one targets the position of the one in front) which gives that natural snake-like trail.
Things that were harder than expected:

Getting the day/night cycle to feel smooth without jarring transitions - ended up using a sine curve over a 30 second period
Boss HP bar positioning when the boss is at the edge of the screen
Making the victory parade feel actually celebratory - ended up with 300 confetti particles and rainbow spinning followers

Things that came together quickly:

The story card system (just an array of objects, pause the game, show the card, resume)
Web Audio synthesized sounds - once you get the pattern down for one sound, the rest are variations
The high score system using localStorage

The History Cards:
I wanted to make sure the history was accurate so I researched each card carefully before writing them. These are real dates and real events:

June 19, 1865 - Gordon Granger arrives in Galveston with General Order No. 3
1866 - First organized Juneteenth celebrations in Texas
Early 1900s - As the Great Migration spread, so did Juneteenth
1980 - Al Edwards successfully lobbied for Texas state recognition
June 17, 2021 - President Biden signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act

I kept the text short because it's displayed mid-game, but I wanted each card to feel genuine and worth reading, not just filler.

What I'd Add with More Time:

A proper marching drumbeat that gets louder as your group grows
More story cards between 250 and some higher milestone for endless mode
Mobile haptic feedback when the boss appears
An accessibility mode with a slower day/night cycle

Final Thoughts:
This was my first time building a game for a jam and doing the whole thing in vanilla Canvas. Honestly it was more fun than I expected. There's something satisfying about getting particle effects and collision detection working from scratch with no help from a library.
If you play it, I hope the story cards land. Juneteenth deserves more than a passing mention - it's been celebrated for 160 years and only became a federal holiday three years ago. That's wild when you think about it.
Go lead your marchers. Happy Juneteenth. 🕯️

Built with HTML5 Canvas and Web Audio API
@snipforge - June 2026