Mercenary Air Combat

I had the idea for this game while driving to a grocery store; it's the sort of arcade game I would have loved as a kid, and I figured it's a good candidate for a little vibecoding.

There is a robust upgrade system and you can custom-tailor your plane to meet mission goals.

Controls are explicitly designed for desktop. W/S or mousewheel for throttle, the plane follows the mouse. LMB to use primary weapons, number keys (1-5) to select secondary weapons, RMB to fire. SHIFT activates afterburners/airbrakes if your plane is equipped with them.

There is an in-game tutorial that explains gameplay concepts.

You can view all the source on Github (https://github.com/kawaicutout/MercenaryAirplaneCombatGame) and use it for whatever. The game is built as a single ~350kb HTML file. I used a custom skill (https://github.com/kawaicutout/html-game-skill) for the workflow; it includes scaffolding tools for the one-file output.

There are settings to turn off audio or adjust visuals; retro mode gives a crunchy pixel feel and greatly improves performance on low-end devices (the visual quality is a rendering resolution adjustment).

FAQ: 

How did you make this game?

I used Freebuff (referral link) for the coding, mostly Deepseek v4 Pro and Deepseek v4 Flash. The plane graphics were made using an in-house vector graphics editor. The cover image was made using Affinity and in-game screenshots.

Why is the game so hard?

There are three tiers (Starter, Tier 1, Tier 2) of plane and weapon. You start with $200,000 to spend, and you should either put it into upgrades on a starter plane or a T1 plane and probably also improve weapons.

Ground attack missions require destroying structures, which have damage resistance based on the current mission difficulty. Bombs do a ton of damage, but only work against ground targets.

Choose a role that matches what you intend to do, 

Why does it take so long to earn money?

T1 missions are balanced around giving you the feel for the game, but the rewards are quite low. Each higher theater you enter gives a multiplier bonus, which is the way to make money quickly.

You get partial payout if you don't return home at the end of the mission; 75% of what you would have earned is lost. If you don't complete the objectives, you don't get paid for them at all, but if you get shot down or crash before you get back to the carrier and after completing objectives you'll still get the remaining 25%.

Bombing civilian structures incurs a payout penalty. You'll never lose money over the course of a mission, but you can wipe out your paycheck.