Before Stage Climb: Roadie Wars as a Platformer and a Browser Brawler
Roadie Wars existed twice before it reached the iPhone: as a Godot platformer with rectangles for sprites, and as a browser beat-'em-up in one 5,500-line HTML file. You can still play the second one.
Roadie Wars: Stage Climb is the first Roadie Wars you can download from the App Store. It's at least the third one I've built.
Attempt one: Godot, and coloured rectangles
In the spring of 2025 Roadie Wars was a Mega Man-style platformer in Godot 4.4. You played a roadie defending a rock band from evil zombie groupies, with run, jump and shoot on the keyboard.
It had three levels, and the names were the best thing about it: Backstage Brawl, Stage Sabotage and Headliner Havoc. It also had no art. The setup notes for the project tell you to create a coloured rectangle for the player, another for the enemy and another for the bullet.
The premise was right from day one: roadies, zombie groupies, a band that needs protecting. Everything else got replaced.
Attempt two: one HTML file
In February 2026 it came back as a side-scrolling beat-'em-up for the browser, written in plain JavaScript on an HTML5 canvas. The entire game is a single index.html of about 5,500 lines: configuration at the top, then the classes, then the drawing code, then the game loop. The canvas is 960 by 540 with CRT scanlines over it.
A lot of what's in Stage Climb was invented here:
- 13 playable heroes with stats for speed, power, defense and luck
- Five venues: Dingy Bar, Small Venue, Theater, Arena, Stadium, with a boss in each
- Friendlies you shouldn't hit, like the pizza guy and the merch guy, who cost you points
- Crowd surfers, stage divers and paparazzi as special enemies
- Roadie power-ups: gaffer tape, a flight case, a dolly and an energy drink
It also grew its own back office. Next to the game sits an admin app, built with Rails, Inertia and React, for managing characters, browsing assets and generating new art. That idea carried straight into the iPhone project, where the art department is a Python folder and the cutscenes have a localhost editor.
You can still play the browser version. Use the arrow keys or WASD to move, space to jump, X to attack, C to switch weapon.
Why the phone game isn't a port
When it came time for an iPhone version, the brawler didn't fit. A side-scroller wants a wide screen and a keyboard. A phone held upright wants something that goes up.
So Stage Climb kept the cast, the five venues, the tone and the number, and rebuilt the game around them as a vertical climber. The 5 stayed because the logo was already perfect, and because starting at 5 leaves four prequels sitting there waiting to be made.
Two of them, it turns out, already exist.