An arcade that runs in a terminal. It draws its games at sub-cell resolution using Unicode block elements, so one terminal cell becomes a 2x2 or 2x3 grid of pixels, and it ships with three games — Asteroid, Tetris and Brickough — playable offline as soon as it starts.

What does it need to run?

A truecolor terminal at 80x24 or larger, and Go if you are running it from source. Prebuilt archives are published on GitHub releases. Terminals that speak the Kitty keyboard protocol also give exact held-key input; the rest fall back to auto-repeat.

How are games loaded?

No game is compiled into the arcade. Every game, the bundled ones included, is a WebAssembly package that runs sandboxed under wazero with no filesystem and no network access, on a per-call watchdog. A game that crashes shows a crash screen; a game that fails to install is listed dimmed with the reason.

Can I write my own game for it?

Yes — the arcade is the whole dev kit. termcade dev new scaffolds a playable game, termcade dev build packages it into a .tcade file, and termcade dev install installs the local package. A game is a Go package implementing the sdk.Game contract: fixed 60-tick-per-second updates, a seven-key input vocabulary, a structured HUD, and drawing onto a canvas in square logical units.

THE TERMINAL ARCADE / OPEN FOR PLAY

One more
game.

THREE CLASSICS
ONE COMMAND

ASTEROID PLAYER 01 / TERMINAL CAPTURE

 ASTEROID                                                       HIGH 1380
╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                     ▗▚                                 │
│                                     ▌ ▌                                │
│                                    ▟▀▀▟▖                               │
│                                                                        │
│                                                                        │
│                                                                        │
│               ▗▄▄▄                                                     │
│              ▄▞▘  ▀▀▌                                                  │
│            ▄▀       ▐                   ▗▄▖                            │
│           ▐          ▌               ▄▀▀▘ ▝▖                           │
│           ▚         ▞    ▗▄▄▖       ▞     ▗▘                           │
│            ▀▄      ▐  ▗▞▀▘  ▝▀▀▄    ▝▚▄▖ ▄▀                ▄▄▄▄        │
│              ▀▄▄▄▀▀▘ ▞▘        ▐       ▝▀                ▗▀    ▀▌      │
│                      ▌          ▌                        ▝▖    ▄▘      │
│                      ▀▚▄▖      ▄▘                         ▀▄▄▄▞        │
│        ▄▖               ▝▀▚▖ ▄▀                                        │
│     ▄▞▀ ▝▚▖                ▝▀                                          │
│   ▄▀      ▝▀▄▖                                                         │
│  ▞           ▐▘                                                        │
│  ▝▚         ▗▞                      ▗▖                                 │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
     SCORE 000020   WAVE 1   ▲ ▲ ▲   ←/→ turn · ↑ thrust · space fire

PLAY IN YOUR BROWSER ↗

Asteroid, Tetris and Brickough, rendered in Unicode pixels. A small arcade for the terminal you already have.

go run github.com/aviorstudio/termcade@latest TRUECOLOR TERMINAL / 80×24 OR LARGER / PLAY OFFLINE

IN THE STARTER PACK

Pick your
next high score.

01
ASTEROID

Asteroids-style rock shooter. An inertial ship on a wrapping field, and big rocks that split into faster small ones.
BUNDLED / PLAY OFFLINE
02
TETRIS

Falling-block stacker with Super Rotation System kicks, a 7-bag randomizer, ghost piece, lock delay, and gravity that tightens by level.
BUNDLED / PLAY OFFLINE
03
BRICKOUGH

Breakout-style brick breaker: steer the ball with paddle english, clear the wall, survive the speed-up.
BUNDLED / PLAY OFFLINE

TERMCADE_PIXELS

One ship. Four ways to cut up a cell.

Every setting draws the same game into the same terminal cells; only the sharpness, and what the font has to know how to draw, change. Below is Asteroid's ship at the start of a wave, captured four times over and blown up — the same five columns of cells every time, a different number of pixels inside them. In the arcade p cycles the style and keeps it, and TERMCADE_PIXELS overrides the saved choice for a single run.

  ▗  
 ▗▘▚ 
 ▟▄▞▖
▝▘ ▝▀

quad 2×2 per cell

Unicode 1.0 block elements. Renders anywhere, and the default.

  🬦  
 🬞🬄🬣 
 🬔🬭🬁🬓
🬉🬂 🬂🬍

sextant 2×3 per cell

Sharpest, near-square pixels. Needs Unicode 13, or you get tofu.

  ▄  
 ▄▀▄ 
▄ ▄▀▄
▀  ▀▀

half 1×2 per cell

The original look, for fonts that struggle with the rest.

  -  
 ::: 
.:_:,
-" "-

ascii 3×3 per cell

A density ramp and line characters. No block glyphs at all.

The front door

Find a game. Make it yours.

The arcade opens on Marketplace. Use Ctrl+N to open the sidebar and switch to Library. Browse without signing in; Add saves a game to your account, while Play downloads and installs it. Your installed games stay in Library even when you are signed out.

The live registry is api.termca.de. Package bytes pass through it and are checked against the sha256 recorded when the release was published before either the terminal or web app runs them. TERMCADE_REGISTRY selects a local registry for development.

                     ▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄   ▄▄  ▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄
                       ██   ██▄▄  ██▄▄▄▀ ██▀▄▀██ ██  ▀▀ ██▄▄██ ██  ██ ██▄▄
                       ██   ██▄▄▄ ██  ██ ██   ██  ▀███▀ ██  ██ ██▄▄█▀ ██▄▄▄


                                        recently played
                                   ▸ BRICKOUGH  ··· high 580
                                     ASTEROID  ··· high 1380

                                            → LIBRARY
                                          → MARKETPLACE

            ↑/↓ select · enter open · l library · m marketplace · p pixels · q quit

Library capture from an earlier release. Current releases open on Marketplace.

`termcade`	open the arcade on Marketplace; Ctrl+N opens the sidebar
`termcade add author/slug`	add a marketplace game to your account and this machine
`termcade list`	what is in your arcade
`termcade remove author/slug`	take one off, and off your synced library
`termcade signup`	create an account — or termcade login, termcade logout
`termcade dev new you/mygame`	scaffold a game that is already playable
`termcade dev build`	package a game directory into a .tcade
`termcade dev install build/game.tcade`	install a local package while developing

termcade dev

The arcade you play with is the dev kit.

termcade dev new you/mygame scaffolds a game that already runs, termcade dev build turns the directory into a .tcade, and termcade dev install puts the local build on your own menu. A game is a Go package implementing one interface — and because the boundary is a frozen wasm ABI rather than a Go one, Go is a convenience and not a requirement.

SDK quickstart Packaging The wasm ABI

Ticks: Update() runs exactly 60 times a second, stepped off the measured clock rather than drifting
Input: four directions, two action buttons and start — with real releases where the terminal sends them
Drawing: a canvas in square logical units; the game never sees the pixel grid it lands on
HUD: labelled fields and a hint. The shell owns every pixel of the styling
Dependencies: the sdk module, which depends on nothing outside the standard library
Boundary: wasm ABI v1, frozen. A host refuses a guest whose version it does not speak

THREE GAMES IN THE BOX. THE REST IS YOURS.

The arcade you play with
is the dev kit.

Get the binary ↗ Make your own game ↗

Sandboxed WebAssembly games. A fixed 60-tick update loop. Four directions, two action buttons and start.

One more game.

Pick your next high score.

ASTEROID

TETRIS

BRICKOUGH

One ship. Four ways to cut up a cell.

Find a game. Make it yours.

The arcade you play with is the dev kit.

The arcade you play with is the dev kit.

One more
game.

Pick your
next high score.

The arcade you play with
is the dev kit.