I'm confused by your advice, honestly. Defold is definitely not ultra-light, it's a whole ide/studio engine. If I was recommending for ease of entry, I'd 100% pick a "fantasy console" like Pico-8[1] or one of the many alternatives[2] that are free and use a different language if Lua isn't the person's thing.

Second, Phaser[3] actually IS regular javascript. It's the opposite of Defold that is a whole node based editor thing. Phaser is just a an API you use in a script file, that you just splonk into your html page. I don't know how much more standard JS you can get than that.

[1]: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

[2]: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy

[3]: https://docs.phaser.io/phaser/getting-started/set-up-dev-env... (linked to the hello world example)

> Defold is definitely not ultra-light

Defold ships as a ~2MB executable, is designed for lightweight performance on non-cutting-edge mobile devices, and focuses on portability with a commitment to never require any build tooling. Professional game developers and hobbyists alike very much consider it a lightweight platform, but you're welcome to disagree with them.

> I'd 100% pick a "fantasy console" like Pico-8

Ok?

> Phaser[3] actually IS regular javascript ... I don't know how much more standard JS you can get than that.

Your linked example starts with `class Example extends Phaser.Scene` as the base for everything, then fills it with gems like `this.physics.add.image(400, 100, 'logo')` ... For your colleagues' sake, I truly hope that's not the sort of "regular javascript" you use at work.