✏️ Pencil Hit

#game

A single-file tap-to-throw arcade game in the style of the classic Knife Hit, rendered in the same picture-book aesthetic as Jumping Bird and Watermelon Game (warm dark-brown outlines, flat fills, Fredoka + Jua typography). Throw pencils into a rotating wooden log — time each throw so the pencil doesn't collide with one already stuck in.

How to Play

1. Tap GAME START to begin.
2. Tap anywhere on the play area (or press Space / ↑) to throw a pencil straight up at the log.
3. The pencil sticks in safely if it lands far enough from every existing pencil. +1 point per stick.
4. Hitting an apple on the log earns +3 bonus points and clears it.
5. If the incoming pencil collides with a pencil already stuck in the log, the game ends immediately.
6. Complete a stage by landing all 7 pencils — the log clears, a new stage begins, and the challenge increases.
7. Tap Play Again on the game-over screen, or 🏠 Home to return to the start screen.

Features

Pencil

Each pencil is drawn with five distinct sections:

• Lead tip — dark grey triangle; the contact point that embeds into the log.
• Wooden cone — beige trapezoid exposing the shaved wood.
• Yellow body — long flat rectangle with faint vertical grain lines.
• Ferrule — silver/grey metal band.
• Eraser — pink rounded-bottom cap.

Pencils rotate with the log once stuck. A row of dots at the bottom shows how many throws remain in the stage.

Rotating Log

A circular wooden log sits in the upper portion of the canvas. It has a warm amber fill with concentric annual rings, radial grain lines, and a centre knot.

Rotation is driven by a sinusoidal acceleration model: a sine wave with randomly chosen amplitude and period is integrated twice per frame (into velocity, then angle). The log naturally speeds up, slows down, and reverses direction — the rhythm changes every cycle so the player cannot memorise a pattern. Period is randomised between 90 and 180 frames; angular velocity is capped at ±0.14 rad/frame.

Stage Progression

Each stage requires 7 successful pencil throws. Rotation intensity grows with each stage via an amplitude scale that increases by +0.2 up to 2.0, then +0.1 up to 3.0, then +0.05 indefinitely.

From Stage 4 onward, pre-stuck pencils appear — one additional pencil every two stages, up to a maximum of 7 — evenly distributed around the log at a random starting angle.

Stage	Pre-stuck pencils
4–5	1
6–7	2
8–9	3
10–11	4
12–13	5
14–15	6
16+	7 (max)

Apples

Red apples sit on the log surface and rotate with it. Hitting one awards +3 points and a particle burst. Higher stages place more apples (up to 4).

Sound Effects

All sounds are synthesized on the fly — no external audio files.

• Sawtooth sweep on throw · sine thud on stick · rising sweep on apple hit.
• Square-wave crunch on collision · arpeggio on stage clear · descent on game over.

A 🔊 / 🔇 mute button silences everything. Audio auto-resumes on page return from background.

Quality-of-Life Details

• 🏠 Home resets and returns to the start screen.
• Best-score persistence via localStorage — beating your record shows a ✨ New Best ✨ flourish.
• Live rescale on resize — the in-progress game stays consistent if the window is resized.

Design

• Portrait layout (9:16) sized in vw units — fits entirely on a phone without scrolling.
• No canvas border or background fill — the game area blends seamlessly into the white page.
• Dark-brown outlines (#3a2412) on every shape, matching the hand-drawn picture-book palette of the other games in the set.
• Yellow + orange start/restart buttons with a layered inset shadow for a 3D pressable look.
• Fredoka + Jua font (Google Fonts) for a rounded, child-friendly look.

Tech

• Single HTML file — no build step, no external assets except Google Fonts.
• Canvas 2D rendering, Web Audio API sound synthesis.
• Fixed-timestep loop at 60 Hz — physics rate independent of display refresh.
• Collision is angle-based: incoming pencil rejected if within 0.20 rad (~11°) of any stuck pencil in the log's local frame.