I Built a Malaysian Cultural RPG in a Single HTML File — Here's What Broke

This is a cross-post. Original article on onlyWebPro.

Budak Kampung is a browser-based, top-down RPG set across a 1440×1440 world map with Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultural zones — built entirely in one self-contained HTML file. No engine, no npm, no build step.

This is the honest devlog: every decision I made, and every bug that nearly broke it.

Why build this at all

I'd already built AstroHop — a vertical space platformer — as a single-file HTML game, mostly as a challenge. That worked out well enough that I wanted to push further, this time with something culturally personal: a top-down RPG set in Malaysia.