Ludo's Quest is a mobile-first side-scrolling platform game inspired from Super Mario Bros and Ghosts n' Goblins. It targets kids around 6 to 12, but is just as fun for adults.
Ludo's Quest includes Maker, a user generated level editor. Allows anyone to build their own levels to share with their friends.
Ludo's Quest was designed for iOS, specifically for the iPad. Since it was written in HTML5, it works just as well in your browser.
In October 2026, Ludo's Quest relaunched on the App Store for iPhone and iPad as a native app. The whole game was rewritten in Swift by Claude, Anthropic's AI, ported from the original Javascript. Same levels, characters, comics and touch controls, now with game controller and keyboard support, and your progress synced between devices with iCloud.
It is built entirely on Apple's own frameworks, with no third-party libraries: SpriteKit draws the game, SwiftUI and UIKit host it, GameController handles controllers and keyboards, AVFoundation plays the music and sound effects, Core Text renders the game font, and iCloud key-value storage keeps your saved games.
Version 2.0 also brings three new music tracks created by Claude: Night (levels 5–8), Graveyard (levels 9–12) and Finale (levels 13–16). Listen to them on the press kit page.
You can make videos of this game in any shape or form. Just make sure to contact me info@ludosquest.com.
Ludo's Quest was designed, programmed and released by me, Martin Drapeau. Graphics and music were done by awesome artists I found on the web. Most of these are non-exclusive meaning you can purchase and use those assets for your own projects. Let me introduce you to these great artists:
The soundtrack and effects were all composed by Zach Striefel. Zach was monumental in bringing this game to life by providing an awesome soundtrack you don't get tired of listening to over and over as you play. Not to mention the great work on sound effects.
Zuhria designed most of the graphics in these games. Very polished and easy to integrate. Checkout his website gameart2d.com.
Sophie conceived the introduction and conclusion comics. Extremely easy to work with I strongly encourage any indie dev studio to ask for her help. Checkout her amazing online comic Glorieux Printemps. You can reach her there.
Tiệp brought Vandaft the villain to life. He also came up with his name! You can find Tiệp's work on Graphic River.
Claude, the AI from Anthropic, rewrote Ludo's Quest in Swift for version 2.0 and created its three new music tracks.
Graphic assets come from other great artists on Graphic River and Game Dev Market.
My 7-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl who helped to bounce off ideas and play-test the game. Merci pour votre patience et encouragement les enfants.
I'm a father of 3 and the CTO at Amilia. I'm also an amateur tennis player and a game dev hobbyist. Writing and marketing this game is a hobby. I'm no full-time indie. Just a guy writing a game I want to play on my iPhone in the metro. A game I hope my kids and their friends will also enjoy.
The original Ludo's Quest was written in Javascript, using Canvas (version 2.0 is a native rewrite in Swift). It is an HTML5 game tuned for mobile, and thanks to Ludei it is optimized for iOS and Android. Many thanks to the following folks and the tools/libraries they've built. Ludo's Quest could not exist in its current form without them.
In 2009, Jeremy launched Backbone.js, one of the Javascript libraries which helped to revolutionize front-end web development. Ludo's Quest was built with Backbone Game Engine, a framework I built on Backbone. I tip my hat to you Jeremy.
Cocoon.io compiles Javascript to native in one click. Many thanks to the folks at Ludei for building Canvas+, the accelerated HTML5 canvas that makes Ludo's Quest run so fast on mobile. Special thanks to their support team for answering my many questions, and fixing bugs when I find them.
This great developer built Simple Javascript quadtree, the Quad-tree used in Backbone Game Engine.
Logan Smyth from inkling built backbone.native, a replacement for jQuery in Backbone. This allowed for Backbone to work DOMless, a necessity for Canvas+.
This game took 1 year to develop (checkout the dev log and dev faq), with another year prior to build the framework Backbone Game Engine. All work was done during evenings, 8 to 10, and early morning on the weekends.
Checkout my blog, and this article about my journey to bring an HTML5 game to life on mobile. As I embark the marketing phase of this project, I'll be posting more and more on adoption and sale figures.