HISS is a skin for the Video.js 10 player that turns it into a handheld game console.

The idea started with the seek bar. It already works like a progress bar in a game, so I made it a lane and put a snake on it. The snake eats pellets as the video plays, and its length is how much you have watched.

Drag the playhead ahead and the snake chases it, with a preview of the frame you are heading to. Drag it back and the snake coughs the pellets up again. Chapters are stages marked with flags, the clock on the left is your SCORE, and the length of the video is the GOAL.

I gave myself one rule: anything that looks like a game has to be a real player state. PRESS START is the poster. While it buffers, the snake circles on the LOADING screen. When you pause, it gets stuck in a knot and keeps trying to pull free. A failed stream shows GAME OVER with CONTINUE?, which retries, and the end of the video is STAGE CLEAR with PLAY AGAIN.

The buttons are a game pad. A plays and pauses, B mutes, the D-pad skips 10 seconds or changes the volume, and one menu holds quality, speed and captions.

The console changes shape with the screen. On a desktop it sits under the picture. On a phone the keys scale down. Turn the phone sideways and it becomes a handheld, with the picture in the middle and the controls on either side. In fullscreen the console steps aside while the video plays and comes back when you move the mouse or tap.

Every control is a stock Video.js component under the styling, so the player still works for everyone. Each control is a tab stop with a visible focus ring, it holds up in high-contrast mode, motion stops for people who turn it off, and captions sit on a dark plate so they stay readable over bright and dark footage.

The player streams my 2026 showreel from Mux, with chapters and a caption track that describes each piece of work.