AVOIDANCE
A minimalist mouse-only avoidance game built with P5.js. How long can you survive?
- graham makes · Seattle, WA
- Title
- AVOIDANCE
- Price
- Free
- Licence
- Open source
- Edited
- October 3, 2026
- Writeup
- AVOIDANCE
- Features
- 1 Simple Controls
- Move your mouse to avoid the pursuing enemies. That's it. No keyboard, no clicks, just pure evasion.
- 2 Browser-Based
- Play instantly in any modern browser. No downloads, no installation, no waiting.
- 3 Easter Eggs
- Hidden surprises await those who explore the game thoroughly. Can you find them all?
AVOIDANCE is a simple mouse-only game that began as an experiment in using P5.js for interactive data visualization, and quickly turned into an entertaining game of cat and mouse (pun intended) once I realized the potential of cursor position based logic.
It’s an ode to procrastination by nature of avoiding that which pursues you, and an exercise in meta-procrastination by the fact that I spent a few days working on this instead of attending to my actual workload.
About
Having had some exposure to Processing in the past (upon which P5.js is based), I found the API to be relatively straightforward. It reminds me a bit of the CreateJS suite, which I’ve used in other games I’ve made.
Ultimately I still plan to use P5.js for visualization (my notebooks are full of half-baked interactive music visualizer ideas) and I think that making this game was a great introduction to the capabilities and quirks of the library.
P.S. - it was tricky with a mouse-only mechanic, but I managed to hide some fun little easter eggs in the code. See if you can find them without reading the source code!
