Sometimes the best Phaser games come from the simplest ideas. Lumenia is a minimal browser game built by Billy Wilcosky, a developer who had never made a video game before, was actively job hunting, and still managed to ship something fun and polished.
The concept is clean: you are light. Move around the board collecting pixels of light before the black holes pull them in. Get too close to a black hole and it will drag you in too. Each hit costs you half your light pixels, so getting careless adds up fast.
How It Plays
The inspiration came from Pac-Man: one screen at a time, simple rules, immediate fun. That structure turned out to be a perfect fit for a web game built with Phaser.
Every 5 levels there is a boss battle: a larger black hole that moves, accelerates as it absorbs light, and needs to be defeated by shooting your collected light pixels at it. Each shot reduces your score, so accuracy matters.
Not in the mood for a challenge? There is a zen mode with no black holes, no bosses, just floating around collecting light with calming background music.
Built with Phaser and Cursor
Billy chose Phaser after a quick search for open source JavaScript game frameworks. He knew web development but had never built a game, so he paired Phaser with Cursor to move faster through the parts he wasn't confident in. There was still trial and error, still troubleshooting, but the combination worked. The goal was to keep it minimal and actually ship it, which he did.
The game runs entirely in the browser, works on both desktop and mobile, and has a small leaderboard for players who sign up and log in.
Play It Now
Lumenia is available to play for free online. If you are looking for a well-executed example of what you can build with Phaser as a first game project, this is worth a few minutes of your time.