Building games for Flickcade

Flickcade is a swipe feed of instantly playable games. Players scroll vertically — like short videos — and every reel IS your game, already booted and running. These docs cover what that environment means for your build and how to integrate the GameReels SDK.

How your game runs

You upload a ZIP of your HTML5 build in the Developer Portal. After review, the feed serves it inside the app's WebView. Three things are different from a normal browser tab:

1. You boot off screen. The feed warm-loads the next games before the player reaches them. Your game must not start gameplay, audio or timers on load — wait for the appActive event.

2. You get paused a lot. Every swipe hibernates you (appHidden) and may resume you later (appActive). A game that keeps its internal clock running while hidden greets the returning player with a lost run.

3. The app draws over your edges. The navigation bar and engagement overlays sit on top of your viewport — keep critical UI away from the extreme top and bottom.

The GameReels SDK in 30 seconds

The SDK is one global object, window.GameReels — and inside Flickcade it is always present: the app injects it before your first statement. Integration is subscribing to two lifecycle events and calling ready():

index.html

<script src="gamereels-bridge.js"></script>
<script>
  GameReels.on('appActive', () => game.resume());
  GameReels.on('appHidden', () => game.pause());
  window.addEventListener('load', () => GameReels.ready());
</script>

Integration is optional— an un-integrated game still runs, and the app enforces silence and zero CPU off screen natively. What the SDK buys you: correct pause behavior, a controlled init window, and in-game analytics (levels, outcomes, rewards) — which you can verify today in the preview's event log, and which will feed your portal dashboard once the ingest pipeline ships.

Where to go next

Concepts & API — the full event reference, ready() semantics and limits. Then pick your engine guide: Web/HTML5, Unity WebGL or Cocos Creator, and verify everything in the preview.