[eel]

Without seeing the prompt they gave you and not knowing the context you would have gained from the technical interview, we're all just guessing here.

My guess is that they were expecting a much simpler application for a simple problem. Also for a JS game with a tiny backend, the Github project code is heavily weighted toward PHP (73% PHP vs 20% JS). Perhaps in their internal discussions, a word like "over-engineered" was brought up.

I'm not saying that it's bad code. It looks fine to me.

Other point is that the technical interview is a time to ask questions for the interviewee (when they allow). What is their development process? Do they iterate and prototype a lot, or is their process closer to waterfall? Assuming their stack is primarily PHP, do they use a framework? Do they follow MVC? Do they use a JS framework? Etc... Having known the answers to these questions would have helped you create an application that looked closer to their comfort zone. (Even if you don't know a coding test is coming, you still should want to know the answers to these questions so that you can know if you are getting into a situation where you might have to maintain old applications written in PHP 4, for instance.)

[joesmo]

It's clear that their stack is not PHP from honestfeedback's comment about not being familiar with composer (though really composer does not require sudo if used properly). From briefly glancing at the code, I also think it looks fine and for a one to two hour project, IMO, is way more than any company should expect. I agree that knowing the answers to these questions is crucial regardless of coding tests, but an interviewer who can't judge code that's not in a familiar format (MVC, framework, etc.) is a junior developer and shouldn't be judging any code.

I hope the OP finds a job someplace where his skills will be appreciated, a place that doesn't ask for free work. Sounds to me that they were really too lazy to look at the whole application or didn't have the technical know-how to understand an application written in frameworks they were not familiar with.