---
title: "Go Home Tanuki"
description: "Go Home Tanuki: Get a drunk tanuki home, at least for tonight."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/go-home-tanuki/
---

# Go Home Tanuki

Get a drunk tanuki home, at least for tonight.

2016 · with Kent Salcedo, Sarah Kurisu and Corina

[See it live →](https://tanuki.joekarlsson.com/) · [View on GitHub →](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/go-home-tanuki)

## Artist statement

A lot of office workers know this ritual: work late, go drinking with your coworkers, get home somehow, and do it again tomorrow. Go Home Tanuki is based on the long hours that are common in Japanese office jobs, and its worker is a tanuki, the raccoon dog from Japanese folklore.

You fly him home through the night past clouds and rocks. Sake makes him drunker, and the drunker he gets, the higher you score, so the game pays you for the part of the night that wrecks him. Get him drunk enough and the night starts coming at you faster.

He never gets home. A run ends when he hits a cloud or a rock, and the title screen puts him back at the bar, slumped over while his phone rings to tell him to come home.

## Play it

Click the game to start, then click or press the spacebar to fly. It starts muted here; the buttons in the corner turn sound on and go full screen. [Open it full screen →](https://tanuki.joekarlsson.com/)

[![Go Home Tanuki: a loading card listing Tanuki's daily ritual (work, drink, go home), the title screen of a sleepy tanuki slumped over a bar with a phone saying come home, then the tanuki flying through the night past clouds and sake bottles](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/projects/go-home-tanuki-poster.webp)](https://tanuki.joekarlsson.com/)

## How it's made

JavaScript · Phaser · Arcade physics · Vite

We made it over one weekend in Phaser. In 2025 I moved it to a modern build so it still runs in a browser, and in November 2026 I tuned it again: it fits any screen, plays on phones, keeps your high score and goes full screen.

_Diagram: How a run of Go Home Tanuki scores: drunkness starts at 5, sake adds 1 or 3, he sobers up by 1 every 3 seconds, at 10 the lamps and clouds speed up for the rest of the run, and when he hits a cloud or rock the score is drunkness times seconds, plus 10 per meter, plus a combo bonus_

## Lineage

Next game jam

[Wave Jump](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/wave-jump/): A race for two people on one keyboard, set on an 80s sunset grid. You both ride a white wave that never stops rolling, and the first one to dive through the checkered gate scores. 2018 · 5 stars · JavaScript, Phaser, Arcade physics

[Project page](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/wave-jump/) · [Source](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/wave-jump) · [Demo](https://wavejump.joekarlsson.com/)

[See it live →](https://tanuki.joekarlsson.com/) · [Get the code on GitHub →](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/go-home-tanuki)

[← All works](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/)