🛷 Elvis: Snow Run — Sled Dog Racing

A 3D sled-dog racing / adventure game starring Elvis, the small wooly pure-white Siberian husky with bright blue eyes. Draft a team of huskies, harness up, and race the legendary 1925 serum run across three escalating legs — the trail bends and climbs, cuts through canyons with steep valley walls on either side, and gets faster and busier the deeper you go. Dodge fallen trees, ford icy rivers at the right spot, and outrun the wolves.

Built with Three.js — runs entirely in the browser, no build step, no install. Just open it.

▶ Play: (enable GitHub Pages on this repo — see below)

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How to play

1. Title → Start the Run.
2. Draft your team. Elvis is your locked lead dog (matched to the real Elvis). Recruit up to four more huskies — name each one, choose its coat (black & white, gray & white, red & white, agouti, sable, pure white) and eye color, and spend 100 points across five characteristics.
3. Race. Auto-mush forward, steer to thread the obstacles, and deliver the serum to Nome with as much of it intact — and as fast — as you can. Three stars for a fast, clean, full-serum run.

It escalates. Within each leg the trail gets progressively faster and busier — the team's pace ramps up (watch the PACE gauge) and obstacles thicken from a sparse opening into a dense final push. A guaranteed clear lane always exists, but it tightens.

The journey — three legs

Win a leg and your team carries over to the next, harder one:

Leg	Route	Terrain	Weather
1 · The Serum Run	Nenana → Nome	Gentle sweeping bends, a river crossing	Aurora night
2 · Rainy Pass	Rohn → Nikolai	S-curves, a climb, a gorge with towering rock walls	Dawn alpenglow
3 · The Gorge	Shaktoolik → Koyuk	Sharp chicanes, a ridge with valleys falling away both sides, a deep gorge	Blizzard night

The track turns, climbs and threads canyons via a "course path" transform — gameplay stays in trail-relative lanes (so dodging is always fair) while the world bends and the camera banks into the turns.

Controls

Action	Keys	Touch
Steer left / right	← → or A D	◀ ▶ buttons
Mush faster (boost)	Shift / Space / W / ↑	BOOST button
Mute / unmute	M	🔊 button

Boosting is faster but burns stamina. Cruise to recover it.

Sound is fully procedural (Web Audio, no audio files): a smooth runner-on-snow glide that brightens with speed, paw-fall patter synced to the team's gait, and crash thuds. It starts when you begin a run; mute with M or the 🔊 button (your choice is remembered).

The five characteristics

Each dog gets 100 points to distribute (5–40 per stat). Your sled is driven by the team average, so a balanced roster matters.

• Speed — raises the team's top speed.
• Acceleration — reach top speed faster and recover quicker after a crash.
• Endurance — bigger stamina pool, tires more slowly.
• Leadership — sharper, more responsive steering.
• Decision-Making — earlier hazard warnings and a wider safe window at the river.

Hazards

• 🪵 Fallen logs & 🪨 rocks — steer around them.
• 🫎 Moose — a big immovable hazard parked on the trail.
• 🐺 Wolves — they angle toward you as they close in; break away laterally.
• 🧊 River crossing — only the ice bridge (between the green flags) is safe. Miss it and the serum takes cold-water damage.

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Run it locally

No dependencies are required to play — it's static files. Any static server works:

# option A: zero-install (Python)
npm run dev          # -> http://localhost:5173

# option B: anything else
npx serve .

Then open the printed URL. (Opening index.html directly via file:// will not work because ES modules need to be served over HTTP.)

Deploy (GitHub Pages)

1. Push to GitHub.
2. Repo Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source: Deploy from a branch, branch main, folder / (root).
3. The game will be live at https://<user>.github.io/elvis-sled-racing/.

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Project layout

index.html          # shell + Three.js importmap (via unpkg CDN)
css/style.css       # all UI (title, draft, HUD, results)
src/
  main.js           # bootstrap + screen manager + results + leg progression
  screens.js        # title screen + team-draft screen (rotating husky showcase)
  race.js           # a race leg: physics, obstacles, river, camera, win/lose
  path.js           # the course path: bends, elevation, headings, canyon zones
  track.js          # segmented terrain that follows the path (trail, gorge walls, ridges)
  world.js          # themed atmosphere: sky, aurora/sun/moon, stars, mountains, snow
  husky.js          # the procedural Siberian husky (matched to Elvis) + run gait
  teamRig.js        # sled + musher + gangline + dog team formation
  props.js          # low-poly winter props (logs, rocks, moose, wolves, cabins…)
  hud.js            # in-race heads-up display
  input.js          # keyboard + touch
  config.js         # stats, coat/eye palettes, Elvis spec, THEMES + LEVELS
  util.js           # seeded RNG + helpers
assets/reference/   # drop the real Elvis photos here (see ELVIS.md)

Roadmap

Three legs ship today (turning tracks, gorges/ridges, biome themes, escalating pace & density). Adding a new leg is just another entry in LEVELS (route, curve, canyons, theme) in config.js. Planned next: overflow-ice hazards, whiteout visibility spikes, avalanches in the gorge, ranked time trials, and per-dog fatigue across the journey.

Credits

Starring Elvis 🐺. Inspired by the 1925 serum run to Nome (Balto & Togo). Made with Three.js.