I have a problem. It’s the kind of problem that starts with a quiet, dangerous thought and ends with a sunrise, an empty energy drink can, and a thousand new lines of code.

If you’re the type of person who likes to build things, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s that little voice in your head that whispers, “I could probably make that.” Before you know it, it’s 3 AM, and you’re neck-deep in code, seriously debating the economic implications of a virtual drone upgrade.

This time, the siren song came from the world of incremental games. You know the ones: Cookie Clicker, AdVenture Capitalist, Universal Paperclips. They’re the kind of games that trick you into thinking you can just leave them running in the background, but soon you’re checking in every five minutes, hopelessly addicted to the simple joy of watching numbers go up. It’s like gardening, if your plants were made of pixels and your harvest was pure, unadulterated dopamine.

So, of course, I had to build one.

Introducing Void Miner: My Latest Time Sink

It’s called Void Miner, and it’s a game about mining a lonely asteroid in the middle of nowhere. You start with nothing but your own two hands (or, well, one clicking finger), gathering shimmering “Shards” from the rock. It’s a slow, manual process at first. But soon, you’re not just a clicker; you’re the CEO of a burgeoning interstellar mining operation.

You’ll buy fleets of automated mining drones that dutifully chip away at the asteroid with their tiny laser beams. You’ll upgrade to advanced drones, build sprawling mining arrays, and eventually command entire swarms of them. As your shard count skyrockets, you’ll unlock the ability to construct massive mining barges and haulers, turning your little rock into a proper industrial hub.

But the rabbit hole goes deeper. Eventually, you’ll unlock the Refinery, where you can smelt your mountains of Shards into precious “Alloys.” These are the key to permanent, game-altering upgrades. And for the true addicts, there’s Prestige. This lets you blow up your entire operation to gain “Singularity Points,” which give you a permanent boost to all future shard generation. It’s a vicious, wonderful cycle of creation and destruction, all for the sake of making the numbers go up even faster.

It’s a classic clicker game, but with one major difference: I decided to build the whole thing in Three.js.

Why? Because I’m an artist, and I can’t help myself. I wanted it to look cool. Even if it’s just a silly browser game, I wanted to see the drones buzzing around the asteroid. I wanted to watch their little laser beams . I wanted it to feel less like a spreadsheet and more like a little world in a browser tab. The extra work was worth it just to see it all come to life.

The Tech Stack (or, How I Sabotaged My Sleep Schedule)

The game is built on a pretty simple stack, mostly because I didn’t want to spend a week wrestling with a new framework:

• HTML/CSS: Just the basics. The UI is all standard HTML, styled with CSS.
• Vanilla JavaScript: All the game logic—from how many shards you get per click to the ridiculously complex math behind the prestige system—is written in plain old JavaScript. No frameworks, no libraries (except Three.js). Just a whole lot of if statements and for loops. It was a good exercise in keeping things simple and really understanding how all the pieces fit together.
• Three.js: This is what makes the whole thing go. The asteroid, the drones, the space dock, the laser beams, the stars in the background—it’s all rendered with this amazing 3D library. It’s what gives the game its visual flair and makes it more than just a bunch of buttons and numbers. I even added a little camera-focus button to swoop between the asteroid and the space dock, mostly just because I thought it would look neat.

The Part Where I Admit It’s Not Perfect

So, is the game a flawless masterpiece? Absolutely not. Let’s be honest: the code is a beautiful, chaotic mess in some places, held together by caffeine and sheer force of will. The game balance is probably a disaster. I’m sure there’s a combination of upgrades that will either break the game completely or make it an unbearable grind. And I’m positive there are bugs hiding in the code, just waiting for the right moment to crash your browser. (I’m looking at you, drone-beam-collision-detection-that-I-commented-out-at-2-AM!)

But you know what? It was a blast to make. It was a fun challenge, and it forced me to learn a ton about 3D rendering and managing a complex game state. It’s a good reminder that you don’t need a big team or a huge budget to make something fun. You just have to start.

So, if you’ve got a few minutes (or, let’s be honest, a few hours) to kill, go ahead and give Void Miner a try. Click the rock, buy a drone, and watch the numbers go up. And if you find a bug or a way to completely break the economy, please, please let me know. I’ll add it to my to-do list, right after I buy just one more upgrade.

You can play it here: Void Miner

Happy mining!