Morphball
A rolling sphere crossing a night landscape, where the only trick creating depth is that nearer layers move faster than far ones.
Morphball is a study in cheap depth. There is no 3D here — just flat layers scrolling at different rates. The moon barely drifts, the far mountains crawl, the treeline slides, the ground races. Your eye reads the speed difference as distance, the same illusion every side-scrolling game leans on.
The ball rolls, tilts into speed, and jumps with a little squash on takeoff. It is a small thing, but it is the difference between a diagram of parallax and something that feels alive.
The 2012 original depended on GitHub-hosted sprite frames and a dead file:/// path for the volcano layer. Rebuilt with fully procedural, vector-drawn layers — no external images, nothing to rot.
A parlour game of liars, simulated whole — watch the table argue itself to death, or take a seat at it.