🎾 Building a Privacy-First, Vanilla JS Language Learning Game

Title: 🎾 Building a Privacy-First, Vanilla JS Language Learning Game

Hi Dev.to community! 😁

As a passionate hobbyist developer, I believe educational web tools should be lightweight, respectful of user privacy, and simply fun. Today, I'm excited to share a small experiment: Ord-Tennis.

🎯 What is it?

A retro, terminal-style "Pong" game where you catch a falling ball to reveal vocabulary translations, complete with native pronunciation powered by the browser's native Web Speech API.

🛠️ Under the Hood

• ⚡ 100% Vanilla JS: No frameworks, no build steps. Pure HTML, CSS, and JS.
• 🔒 Privacy by Design: Zero cookies, zero external trackers, 100% client-side execution.
• ♿ Smooth & Accessible: A fixed-timestep game loop ensures consistent physics across all devices, paired with optimized touch and keyboard controls.

🌍 Languages & Culture

The hub now features 17 unique language pairs, intentionally going beyond common translations to celebrate diverse cultures. Some favorites include:

• 🇳🇴 Norwegian & 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scots
• 🇨🇭 Romansh & 🇮🇸 Icelandic
• 🇸🇰 Slovak & 🇫🇮 Finnish 🇫🇮🤍🇩🇰🤍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🤍🇳🇱🧊🗻 #### 💬 Let's Connect! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you experimented with native Web APIs for educational tools?

🔗 Try it out here: https://www.helo.mom/game/index.html

Thank you 😁

Tags: #javascript #webdev #privacy #gamedev #vanillajs #accessibility