An arcade shooter set inside your favorite code editor
English | 简体中文
🕹️ How to play • 🧩 Extension • 💻 Development
"The VS was never short for Visual Studio. It means versus."
An arcade shooter that takes the name literally: Microsoft, armed with a TypeScript compiler, fights the code itself. The whole game runs inside a recreated VS Code workbench — bugs, syntax errors and a legacy MONOLITH stand between you and shipping the release.
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
WASD / arrow keys |
Move |
Space |
Shoot |
R / Shift |
Refactor ultimate (when the R bar is full) |
Esc / P |
Pause |
Touch devices get an on-screen D-pad, fire, refactor and pause buttons.
A run is five waves plus a final boss — about five minutes for a practiced player. Pick one upgrade before wave 1 and one after each of waves 1–4; each of those clears also grants +5 max HP, +2 ammo and +4% damage. Clear wave 5, then defeat MONOLITH to win. Upgrade menus pause the game.
Upgrades (8)
| Upgrade | Effect |
|---|---|
| ⚡ Compiler Upgrade | Weapon level +1 (more projectiles, max 5) |
| ❤️ Heap Expansion | Max HP +12, heal 12 |
| 📦 Buffer Overflow | Magazine +5, restore 5 ammo |
| ⚙️ Fast GC | Reload 10% faster per stack (max 30%) |
| 🔥 Overclock CPU | Fire 8% faster per stack (max 24%) |
| ↟ Piercing types | Hit one more distinct enemy per level (max 2) |
| ↔ Reflect API | One side-wall bounce; adds diagonal shots (max 1) |
| ⚠ Buffer pressure | +25% damage per level at ≤25% ammo (max 2) |
Enemies (9)
| Enemy | Symbol | HP | Points | Behavior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bug | 🪲 | 10 | 100 | Slowly homes in |
| Syntax Error | }; |
20 | 200 | Tanky, aimed shots |
| Spaghetti Code | goto |
15 | 150 | Fast and erratic |
| Memory Leak | malloc() |
40 | 300 | Grows larger and tougher, slows down |
| 404 Error | 404 |
15 | 250 | Ricochets, dashes at you |
| Merge Conflict | <<<< |
35 | 350 | Splits on death |
| Infinite Loop | while(1) |
25 | 400 | Spirals, four-way bursts |
| Race Condition | async |
20 | 500 | Teleports, then attacks |
| MONOLITH | LegacyWrapper |
600 | 5000 | Three-phase boss: minions, tracking and spread fire |
Power-ups: ☕ Coffee (speed) · 🤖 Copilot (+1 weapon level for 8 s) · 🐳 Docker (shield) · 🩹 Hotfix (+30 HP)
Combos build with kills (and every 5% of boss HP) and add capped score, damage, fire-rate and ultimate-charge bonuses.
Between runs: 5 cumulative waves unlock the Spread loadout, a first win unlocks Piercing, and every 5 waves add +2 permanent HP (max +10). Progress and the high score are stored locally.
Every VS Code panel shows something real about the run:
- Explorer — score, wave and release progress; open the enemy catalog or project metadata
- Search — enemy database
- Source Control — cleared waves as release history
- Run and Debug — frame time, entity counts, max combo
- Extensions — your installed upgrades and their live state
- Settings — movement sensitivity, sound, English / 中文
- Problems / status bar — warnings are the bugs left in this wave; a live boss is the one error blocking the release
extension/ packages the game as Macrohard vs Code (巨硬大战代码), a self-contained Webview with no workspace or network access. Ctrl+Alt+G (Cmd+Alt+G on macOS) opens the game; the same shortcut pauses it and returns to your editor. A checkpoint is saved after each upgrade choice, so a VS Code restart resumes at the start of that wave.
npm --prefix extension install
npm run package:extension # → artifacts/macrohard-vs-code-0.1.0.vsixRequires Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+.
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:3000
npm run verify # typecheck, lint, unit tests, build
npm run test:e2e # Playwright (Edge on Windows; elsewhere: npx playwright install chromium && CI=1 npm run test:e2e)
npm run deploy # verify, then publish dist/ to GitHub PagesExtension checks: npm run verify:extension and npm --prefix extension run test:integration (set VSCODE_EXECUTABLE_PATH to reuse a local VS Code).
App.tsx workbench shell: layout state and wiring
components/ workbench chrome (activity bar, sidebar, tabs, panels, status bar) and game overlays
game/ simulation: fixed 60 Hz clock, player, enemies, combat, progression, rendering
utils/ i18n, brand names, audio synthesis, settings, formatting
constants.ts enemy, power-up and upgrade data
extension/ VS Code extension host and Webview entry
Gameplay logic in game/ is pure and unit-tested; React only owns the workbench. Workbench colors are Tailwind tokens (vsc-*, syntax-*) in tailwind.config.js. Runtime contracts and design decisions live in docs/optimization-notes.md and docs/gameplay-direction.md.
MIT. Not affiliated with Microsoft; dedicated to every bug we've fought in real life 🪲