About
NeckGames
NeckGames is a collection of free browser games controlled by head and neck movement. Games like NeckPacMan, Neck Flappy, Neck Slicer, Neck Snake, Neck Pong, Neck Crypt, and Neck MonsterRun use a webcam to turn simple head flicks and tilts into game controls.
Each game is designed as a lightweight desk-break experience for people who spend long periods at a computer. NeckGames is not a medical product and does not diagnose, treat, or prevent any condition.
Who Builds NeckGames
NeckGames is an independent, open-source game project. All 23 games on this site were designed and programmed for this project. NeckGames is not a portal that embeds other people's games in an iframe — there is no third-party game content anywhere on the site. Every title is written from scratch in JavaScript and rendered on an HTML canvas, and the artwork, level layouts, sound, and difficulty tuning are produced in-house.
The reason we build rather than embed is the control scheme. Head tracking is not a drop-in replacement for a keyboard: input arrives continuously and noisily instead of as discrete key presses, it has real latency, and players cannot hold a direction the way they hold a key. A game that was designed for arrow keys and then wired to a webcam feels wrong to play. So we wrote our own input layer — it calibrates to your neutral head position, applies a dead zone so small movements do not register, and distinguishes a deliberate flick from ordinary shifting in your chair — and then designed each game around it. Hitboxes, obstacle spacing, and difficulty curves are all set for the way necks actually move, which is slower and less precise than fingers.
The complete source code, commit history, tests, and development documents are available in the public NeckGames repository. Dated player-facing changes are recorded on the project updates page. Publishing the work makes it possible to verify that the games and control layer are built here rather than embedded or republished from another game portal.
How It Works
- The browser asks for camera permission when a game starts.
- Face tracking estimates head direction and movement in the browser.
- Looking or flicking left, right, up, or down controls the game.
- Each game has its own short goal, from collecting dots to slicing fruit.
- Every game also accepts keyboard input, so no game requires a camera.
Privacy-Focused Design
Camera processing happens locally in the browser. The project does not need a backend server to run the games, and camera frames are not transmitted to or stored by NeckGames.
Play
Open any game from the home page, allow camera access if you want to use head controls, and follow the on-screen calibration prompt. If you would rather not use a camera at all, every game can be played on the keyboard instead.
Contact
Questions, bug reports, or feedback on a specific game are welcome — see the contact page.