A short top-down chase set in a busy food court. Search the crates for three secret recipes, carry them out to your crew kitchen and bank them before the three-minute bell, while a faster Chef patrols and you tray-slide away from trouble. You can also swap sides and play the Chef. An early demo, solo with three bots.
Canteen Crashers is a short chase game set in a busy food court, seen from above at a slant in chunky, blocky characters and bright colours. You are a Runner in a teal cap. With two computer-run crewmates you raid the stalls for three secret recipes, gold cards hidden in crates, and try to carry them out through a teal doorway and bank them in your crew kitchen before the bell rings, three minutes after the start. Somewhere in the court a Chef is on patrol, and the Chef is faster than you.
You can also swap sides. Pick Rival Chef on the title screen and you are the one chasing: your job is to stop the crew banking all three recipes before the bell. Both ways round it is "solo + 3 bots", the game's own label: you play alone, and the computer plays everyone else. The game is candid that it is unfinished. The title screen says "Early demo v0.1" and "Working title", and Wavedash's page says the name, art and balance are still in development.
It is Game No. 003 on the free-games hub of Chong-U (@chongdashu), at play.aioriented.dev, where its card calls it a fast early demo with bots and tags it Action and Chase. The card sends you to Wavedash, a game platform, where it was released on 16 September 2026. The hub says of its author: "AI has made the process much faster, and I share how I make each one." That is a line about all his games; neither the hub card nor the Wavedash page says which tools or models built this one, so this entry does not say either. We link to it rather than host a copy; the reasons are at the end.
How to play Canteen Crashers
- Open the Wavedash page and the game starts inside it: a short loading screen, then a title screen. There are two choices before you press Play. Play as is Runner or Rival Chef. Court is the Food Court ("3 min, main demo") or the Mechanics Gym ("2½ min, practice", a small court; we did not play it). A ? button, How to play, opens a three-step card, and the gear button in the corner opens Sound, Reduced motion and Playtest analytics.
- The How to play card sums the Runner's job up in three lines: find the recipes (open the gold-outlined crates; some hold useful gear), don't get caught (slide away and use corners to lose the Chef), and bring all three home (bank outside, through the teal entrances). A hint at the bottom of the screen says "Find the ? crates". The game's own numbers say a search takes about 1¼ seconds and list 24 crates in the Food Court.
- Move with W A S D or the arrow keys. Stand next to a crate and press E to search it; E also picks a recipe up off the floor and banks it when you reach your kitchen, at the counter with the numbered slots 1, 2 and 3. Space is a tray-slide: we saw the runner drop flat and skid away, with "Make way!" on screen and the SLIDE button dimmed for a moment afterwards. F uses gear if you have any (the game's messages name a torch, a soda that gives a speed boost, and a dinner-bell decoy that throws a noise; we did not find any in our rounds), and Q drops the recipe you are carrying so that a teammate can take it.
- The Chef is a computer player who patrols until he sees you. In our last round a message, "Chef saw you! Break his line of sight.", came up first and he then walked up and caught us. A catch shows "Caught! Respawn outside in 3...", and you respawn in the crew kitchen area with "Back outside. Choose your way in." The card's rules are that a Chef hit sends you outside after 3 seconds, that a dropped recipe can be rescued for 15 seconds before it returns to its marked crate, and that you are safe outside, with two ways back in.
- As the Rival Chef the buttons change to TAG (E) and SWEEP (Space): TAG is a strike straight ahead and SWEEP catches Runners all around you. The banner reads "Stop the crew. Guard the recipes." You start in Chef's Prep at the back of the court and the three computer runners search and bank on their own. A miss says "Whiff! Close the gap", and after a sweep the button dims. Runners in their kitchen area are safe from him.
- A round ends when the bell rings (a clock labelled "Until the bell" counts down from 3:00) or when all three recipes are banked. If the bell rings with any recipe still out, the card says "Chef's house!"; if the crew banks all three it says "Recipes rescued!" and "Dinner is saved.", with the number banked underneath. Play Again or Back to main menu follows. Escape or the pause button stops the clock and opens a Paused card with Resume, the settings, How to play, Change court and Main menu.
Controls: W A S D or the arrow keys move. E searches a crate, grabs a recipe or banks one at your kitchen (as the Rival Chef, E is TAG, a strike straight ahead). Space is a tray-slide (as the Chef, SWEEP, a strike all around). F uses gear you have found; Q drops the recipe you carry. Escape or the pause button stops the clock. On a touch screen: a joystick on the left and buttons for gear, SEARCH (GRAB or BANK when it applies) and SLIDE; the Chef gets TAG and SWEEP.
Why it's worth your time
What we did with it. We played it on 24 September 2026 in desktop Chromium on a Mac, from the Wavedash page and without signing in, sending key presses from a script and taking screenshots as we went. Three rounds ran to the end. As a Runner who mostly stayed out of the way, one ended at the bell with 2 of 3 banked ("Chef's house!") and one ended with the two crewmates having banked all three ("Recipes rescued!"); as the Rival Chef we chased and never landed a tag, and the runner bots banked all three. On the game's clock the bots had their first recipe home within about 40 seconds and a second within about 80. We never got a recipe home ourselves and found no gear, so what we say about gear comes from the game's own messages, not from play.
The computer players. Your two crewmates wear green and blue caps and go from crate to crate on their own, and they do the banking. The Chef bot patrols, spots you, and then goes for you; he caught us in the middle of Soda Square. Because the bots do so much, a round can be over without you: in one of ours the crew won while we were standing in a doorway. From the game's code, the Chef's chase speed is 5.1 against 3.8 for a Runner who is carrying a recipe, and his patrol speed is 2.8.
The Food Court. From its map data, it is one court divided into seven named areas: Soda Square in the middle, Bun Run and Sugar Rush down the sides, The Pantry and Roll With It at the back, Chef's Prep behind them, and your Crew Kitchen along the front, where you start. The yellow puddle in Soda Square is marked as a hazard in the game's data, and the message for slipping in it is "Splat! Your recipe is on the floor." We did not step in it. There are two music tracks, named chef-pursuit and pantry-sneak in its files; the browser we drove was silent, so we did not hear them, and the Sound toggle turns music and effects on and off.
It is very new. Wavedash shows it as released and last updated on 16 September 2026, eight days before we played. Its page describes it as an "early playtest demo" and adds that the name, art and balance are still in development. It is built with Three.js (revision 186) and reports which graphics backend it is using, WebGPU or WebGL; a browser that cannot start it gets a message that says so.
Analytics. The game sends anonymous usage events, such as when a round starts and ends and what happens in it, to a workers.dev address that appears to be the author's (its name starts canteen-crashers-collector); we saw the requests go out. The settings card has a Playtest analytics switch, on by default, and says browser visits, country or region, playtime and game events are counted and that no names or IP addresses are stored. From the code, the game leaves it off if your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control.
Wavedash handed the game a generated player name, so we did not sign in and no account is needed to play. Its page also offers Favorite, Donate, Comments, Achievements and Leaderboards, and says a free account unlocks cloud saves, achievements and friends. We did not use them. On a phone the game shows its own touch layout, with the clock and score across the top, the court in the middle and a joystick and buttons underneath; we describe how far we got with it in the phone answer below.
We link to the Wavedash page instead of hosting a copy. The game's files are served by Wavedash's player from a separate address for each build, and when we asked for the page and a music track directly, both answered "Unauthorized": only the player, with a session token, gets them. Wavedash's terms of service (updated 18 January 2026) forbid using a robot or other automatic process, or a manual one, to copy material from the site without prior written consent, and we have no consent from Wavedash. We did not try to get around any of this. We read the game's script only in the browser that loaded it, to check rules and numbers, and kept no copy. We found no licence statement for the game itself, so none is claimed.
How it was made and where it lives
Published on Wavedash, a browser-game platform that serves the game only through its own player. The author publishes as Chong-U. Original: https://wavedash.com/games/canteen-crashers. We link to the original instead of hosting a copy. The game runs inside Wavedash's player, and its page and music files answer "Unauthorized" when they are asked for directly; only the player, with a session token, gets them. Wavedash's terms bar copying material from the site, by hand or with a script, without written consent, and we have no such consent. So Wavedash is the place to play it.
If you like Canteen Crashers, try these
The same author has two other games listed here: Trash Club, a three-collector trash-bag heist in a fenced yard that you can play against bots, and The Cookie Jar, a first-person game about covering up an empty biscuit jar before Mum gets home. Trash Club is the closer cousin: another short round against computer players, on a small board seen from above.
Frequently asked questions
- Is it a finished game?
- No. The title screen says "Early demo v0.1" and "Working title", the footer says "Demo, work in progress", and Wavedash says the name, art and balance are still in development. It has two roles (Runner and Rival Chef) and two courts (the Food Court and a practice court called the Mechanics Gym); we did not find more.
- How long is a round?
- The Food Court is three minutes, counted down from 3:00 as "Until the bell"; the Mechanics Gym is listed as two and a half. A round can end sooner, if the crew banks all three recipes first. In our rounds the bots needed about 80 seconds to bank two.
- How do I win?
- As a Runner, get all three recipes banked in your kitchen before the bell: "Recipes rescued!". If the bell rings with any recipe still out, the Chef wins: "Chef's house!". As the Rival Chef you want the bell to ring first. The game's own rule text says that when the bell rings, any missing recipe wins for the Chef.
- Can I play it with friends?
- No. It is solo against bots ("solo + 3 bots" on the title screen), and Wavedash lists it as singleplayer.
- Does it work on a phone?
- It is meant to: the game's own instructions describe a left-hand joystick and tap buttons, and Wavedash lists touch as an input. In an emulated iPhone 13 (390 by 664) the title screen, the touch layout and the round all fitted without sideways overflow. But the emulated round ran slowly and our synthetic touch on the joystick did not visibly move the runner, so we cannot say the touch controls work, and we did not try a real handset. On a phone Wavedash may also cover the bottom of the screen with a Google sign-in sheet; close it with its X.
- Does it need an account, and does it cost anything?
- It is free, and we played it without signing in. Wavedash offers a free account for cloud saves, achievements and friends, and shows a sign-in prompt, but the game did not need one.
- Does it track me?
- It counts anonymous usage (visits, country or region, playtime and game events) and sends it to a server the author runs. The settings card, under Playtest analytics, has an on and off switch. The game's own text says no names or IP addresses are stored; we read the code and saw the requests go out, and we did not check the server.
- Who made it, and with what?
- Chong-U (@chongdashu), Game No. 003 on his hub, released on Wavedash on 16 September 2026. His hub says AI has made his process much faster and that he shares how he makes each game, but neither the hub card nor the Wavedash page says which tools or models built this one, so we do not say.
- Why can I not play it on this site, like most of the others?
- Its files can only be fetched by Wavedash's own player, which hands out a session token; asked directly, they answer "Unauthorized". Wavedash's terms do not allow copying material from the site without written consent, and we have none. It is free: play it on Wavedash.
