A Physics-Driven Incremental Idle Game - Drop Balls, Chain Combos, Watch the Numbers Climb
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⚡ Incremental
🎯 Physics
🎮 Now Available
A Physics-Driven Incremental Idle Game - Drop Balls, Chain Combos, Watch the Numbers Climb
Neon Cascade is a physics-driven incremental idle game inspired by Peggle, reimagined as an auto-shooter with deep placement strategy and cascading progression. Build your neon peg board, watch balls rain down, bounce off pegs, chain explosive combos, and collect rewards. Unlock new peg types, ball types, and powerful upgrades, then prestige through Nova to unlock the Prism Store tech tree and push even further.
The core fantasy is simple: set up your board, watch the chaos unfold in glowing neon, and keep optimising for bigger and bigger numbers. Balls auto-drop from customizable slots at the top of the board, bounce through a grid of player-placed pegs, rack up combos and score multipliers, and land in collection bins at the bottom. Points become credits. Credits buy upgrades. Upgrades make your board bigger, meaner, and way more hypnotic to watch. The loop never stops.
Built with TypeScript, Vite, and the Canvas 2D API, no external game engine, no physics library. All collision, bouncing, ball trajectory, and neon glow effects are hand-rolled. Ten original synthwave BGM tracks play in the background while you watch your cascade engine run.
Hand-rolled ball physics with weighted bounces, random scatter, and stall detection. Every drop plays differently, no two cascades are the same.
Basic, Multiplier, Splitter, Gravity, Phase, Magnet, Catalyst, Echo, Prism, Surge, Temporal, and the board-clearing Cataclysm peg. Each with unique on-hit effects and upgrade tiers.
Basic, Heavy, Phantom, Echo, Cannonball, Void, and Lucky, each with distinct physics behavior, score multipliers, and visual trails. Assign any ball to any drop slot.
A dynamic tension meter that fills as balls bounce and pegs explode. Stay in the danger zone for massive score multipliers, but push too far and trigger a Cascade Overload.
Consecutive peg hits within a tight window build a combo chain. Hit 3+ for Cascade state, orbiting rings, intensifying glow, and escalating score multipliers on every hit.
Reset your board for permanent multipliers and unlock the 20-node Prism Store tech tree. Each prestige cycle opens deeper upgrades and faster progression.
Drop balls. Chain combos. Watch the numbers climb.
🎮 Play Now on itch.ioFree to play • No download required • Built for desktop browsers
| Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|
| TypeScript | Core Game Logic |
| Vite | Build Tool & Dev Server |
| Canvas 2D API | Game Rendering & Visual Effects |
| Web Audio API | Procedural Sound Effects & BGM |
| Custom Physics | Ball Collision, Bounce, Trajectory |
| localStorage | Save System |
Neon Cascade started in mid-February 2026, right after shipping Tessara. After two months of hex grids and roguelite progression systems, I wanted to try something completely different. I'd always loved incremental and idle games, there's something meditative about a well-tuned progression loop, and I'd never tried building a physics-based game before. So naturally, I decided to do both at the same time.
The first week was all physics. Hand-rolling ball collision, bounce scatter, wall reflection, and stall detection in TypeScript with no external library. Getting that ball to feel right, not floaty, not sluggish, just weighty and satisfying, was the foundation everything else sat on. Once the balls were bouncing and pegs were exploding in neon particle bursts, the rest started falling into place fast.
What followed was one of the most intense development sprints I've ever done. Twelve peg types, seven ball types, eight bin varieties, a prestige system with a full tech tree, a FLUX tension meter, cascade chain combos, procedural Web Audio sound effects, ten original BGM tracks, three visual themes, and a contextual tutorial system, all built in about three weeks of evenings and weekends. The game went from "what if Peggle was an idler?" to a fully featured incremental game with deep strategic placement.
Want the full story? Check out the Neon Cascade Development Log for weekly entries covering the entire journey, from the first bouncing ball to the Go Nova cutscene.