Browser games you can learn in seconds

One Button Arena runs on a single input. It was the first game Aoi Takahara built, a minimalist arcade game she says was "inspired by the idea that popular games can be played with extremely simple mechanics." Her own summary of it: "A single click game built around the idea that a single input can still create meaningful strategy."

Since then she has deployed several playable prototypes on Vercel, including One Button Arena, Trace, Fuse, and Neon Serpent. Most of her projects are simple browser games, "such as one-button games, snake variants, and fast arcade experiences that can be played in seconds," she says.

“The games are currently live, people can play them, and I'm learning what works by building and releasing instead of spending months planning.”

Aoi Takahara

The idea came from watching her peers. As a college student at the University of Southern California, she says, "I have seen numerous students open up a tab to play 2048, Tetris, or Wordle games, and that inspired me to develop similar mechanics."

She cares about this, she says, because "games are one of the few forms of software where even one person can create something that reaches a large audience." She also loves the creative side, designing and engineering games that people genuinely enjoy.

Her focus now is on retention. The main thing, she says, is "finding ways to build games that people can understand in seconds, but enjoy long enough to come back and play again, and spread through word of mouth."