Playable Project

Mario Walker puts Luke on Channel 3.

A 62-stage side-scrolling fan homage, running inside an old television, with 27 production character labs behind the cartridge.

By Eric Rhea Three.js r185 Published August 23, 2026
Play Mario Walker Browse 27 Character Labs
Mario Walker title screen glowing inside a wood-cased 1980s television.
Mario Walker begins where many living-room adventures did: a cartridge, a television, and Channel 3.
Original campaign
30 stages
Retro campaign
32 stages
Character lab
27 entries
Runtime
Three.js r185

The television contains two campaigns

Mario Walker is a browser platform game built around running, jumping, blocking, and a lightsaber that makes old bricks regret their career choices. The original campaign crosses thirty authored space-fantasy routes. Eight fortress stages end with bosses that demand a visible counter, not a lucky pile of hits.

The stage selector also opens thirty-two Retro routes from the start. Luke stays the player character. His movement, saber, block, checkpoints, and damage rules travel with him while the terrain and enemy roster change around him.

The game supports keyboards, gamepads, and touch controls. Its music, atmosphere, and sound effects are synthesized at runtime through Web Audio. No outside service is needed after the local files load.

From cartridge to stage clear

The menus are short because the route is long. A new player can learn the controls, choose a campaign, read one briefing, and get moving.

  1. TitleStart, continue, open the tutorial, or jump to stage select.
  2. Choose a routePick an unlocked mission or any always-open Retro stage.
  3. Read the briefingSee the location, route type, checkpoint, and par time.
  4. PlayRun, jump, deflect, collect credits, and activate the midpoint beacon.
  5. Prove masteryUse the route's lesson to open a boss doorway or reach the goal.
  6. Clear the stageRecord score and time, then unlock the next original mission.

Retro branch: all thirty-two Retro stages are available immediately. They do not wait for original-campaign progress.

The cartridge, the route, and the trouble

Mario Walker stage selector showing the original and Retro campaign routes.
The selector keeps the thirty original missions and thirty-two Retro stages in one route map.
Luke running through an original space-fantasy platforming stage with the game HUD visible.
Original routes combine traversal, combat choices, checkpoints, and environmental lessons.
Luke crossing a Retro platforming stage with brick terrain and native enemy sprites.
Retro stages keep Luke's controls while changing the terrain, enemies, and route vocabulary.
Luke facing an original campaign boss with a segmented boss health display.
Bosses telegraph a specific opening. The useful response changes from arena to arena.
Mario Walker running on a phone-sized screen with movement, jump, saber, block, and use controls.
The same game supports portrait and landscape touch play without an orientation gate.

From the build log

The first public record caught Mario Walker before it was ready to play. A glitch note caught the background simulation continuing after Luke had fallen. The postmortem asks how one person reviews a game that an agent can expand faster than anyone can play it.

Luke and an AT-AT face a giant Goomba inside a Mario Walker Retro stage displayed on a television.

August 26, 2026 · Postmortem

The game grew faster than anyone could play it.

Sixty-two stages, a Character Lab, and an AI-readable debug pane made abundance itself the next design problem.

Read the experiment postmortem
Luke facing Goombas inside an early Mario Walker stage.

August 22, 2026 · Build note

What if Luke walked into a Mario stage?

The rough build already had multiple routes, bosses, flying Goombas, and more stages than one maker had time to play straight through.

Read the original build note
Luke crossing a Retro Mario Walker stage while the world continues around him.

August 22, 2026 · Glitch note

The stage kept moving after Luke did not.

Leave the failed stage alone and an AT-AT eventually walks past, firing at the Goombas that caused the trouble.

Watch the localized glitch video

Every moving subject gets a control plane

The character lab is the other half of Mario Walker. It exposes the production motion, view, variant, timeline, sound cue, and diagnostics for each animated subject. The preview does not substitute a second display model. It loads the same source art and controller used by the game.

Character Lab

Twenty-seven ways to stop the timeline

Search the full roster, filter by campaign, open a lab, and move through neighboring entries without returning to the project page.

Open the Character Lab
Farm Hero production character lab with motion, view, variant, timeline, and proof controls.
Hero and allies2 production labs
Original campaign9 production labs
Retro campaign16 production labs

What the build is testing

The game treats movement and combat as readable choices. A jump can be buffered. A short press and a long press produce different arcs. A block can reverse the right projectile. A saber solves one problem and creates another when a moving shell is nearby.

The original campaign teaches those rules in a sequence: notice, reason, practice, disrupt, reframe, and master. A boss then asks for the same idea under pressure. The Retro campaign tests whether those controls remain understandable against a different set of shapes and timings.

The entire experience is static HTML, CSS, local JavaScript modules, local Three.js r185 files, generated and authored sprite atlases, and procedural Web Audio.

Build record

Build notesCampaign structure, controls, rendering, audio, and character-lab architecture. ChangelogThe initial public GameLab snapshot and future project changes.