Bored To Death

Bored To Death is an arcade style brawler intended as a throw back to arcade games of the past and powered by JavaScript and HTML5. Developed in partnership between Internet Explorer and digital agency Bradley and Montgomery, the game was initially developed to be playable in an arcade machine running IE9 at Internet Explorer's Badger Palooza event at the 2012 SXSW Interactive festival.

The game's main characters, style and gameplay are based on Jason Steele's popular Marshmallow People online video series. An accelerated development timeline and goal of getting the game running in an arcade machine, as well as the organic style of Jason Steele's videos influenced many of the development decisions including the use of frameworks and large sprites. Despite the goal of getting the game up and running in an arcade machine running IE9, Microsoft and Bradley and Montgomery wanted to focus on a web standards based approach, programming in a way that would work cross-browser. The end goal being to create a game using only web standards that players would want to come back to over and over again.