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Charlie Foxtrot Company: the test bed
My first browser game is a squad shooter in the Cannon Fodder tradition, free to play on this site. It's also where I'm learning to build a game engine of my own.
Charlie Foxtrot Company is my first browser game. The idea was simple: rebuild something like Cannon Fodder, the game that hooked me when I was four, and put it on this site, free to play.
It's also a test bed. I've built websites for clients for a decade, so the browser is ground I know. What I wanted to find out was whether I could build a proper game engine there, from scratch, plain enough that I understand every line of it.
What it is
You command a small squad from above with the mouse. Left-click and they move, finding their own way round rivers and walls. Hold the right button and they fire where you point. Split them with the number keys and the men you leave behind lay down covering fire while the rest advance. It's lethal: a rookie dies to one round, and the dead stay dead. They go to Boot Hill, the graveyard that grows with every mission.
Every man is a name on a roster. Survivors earn promotions and get tougher, and before each mission you kit them out yourself: the M16, the AK, the M60 or the RPG.
Under the bonnet
It's built on Three.js, everything drawn as sprites seen from directly above, with no build step: plain files that run in the browser. Underneath are the pieces any game like this needs. Pathfinding, so the squad goes round a river instead of into it. Terrain that matters: long grass and trees hide you, mud slows you, and deep water means swimming with your rifle out of action, so bridges still count. Vehicles that soak up fire and brew up. Machine-gun nests and mortar pits behind sandbags. A helicopter that flies the squad in and comes back for whoever's left.
The art is drawn in code, pixel by pixel, rather than painted, because art isn't my strong point and code is. The gunfire is real recordings, cut and mixed so a rifle sounds like a rifle and a machine gun keeps going for as long as you hold the trigger.
The first tour
The first tour is ten missions, from First Tour of Duty to Iron Rain: a river to fight across, a plantation, a dug-in line to break, a hot landing zone. It's a beta, and I'm still adding to it.
Why a test bed
Charlie Foxtrot has the swagger of an action film, and that's on purpose: it's meant to be daft fun. The games I most want to make are slower and more serious. Tactics and realism are what turned me into a PC gamer, through Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Close Combat, and every system in here is one I'm learning to build properly so I can use it on something that asks more of the player.
For now, it's on the Charlie Foxtrot Company page. Lead your lads, and mind the body count.
Added 19 October 2026: on 3 October this engine became the starting point for Section Command: Helmand Ops. The next post picks the story up on that day.
Who makes this: Section Command: Helmand Ops is made by one person, Jack Mustard, who is the whole of Tactical Chicken Studios.