Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A game fully contained in a link
Hey HN, I made https://linkians.com which is a game where all the action and state is contained in the url. The game involves taking care of little pets (emojis) that live in your url bar. Kind of like tamagotchi or sims. Feed them, play with them, and watch out for enemies! There's no server, just emojis in the url and client-side logic. Any linkians url using the supported emojis is a valid game state so you can save your game, or type out your own url and send it to a friend. I'd appreciate any feedback.
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. A game fully contained in a link launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1IM
Hi HN! I made many small web games in the past with Unity or Phaser. But this time I wanted to make something completely on my own. So I coded a basic game framework in plain JavaScript, and used it to make Almost Pong. This was a really fun project that taught me a lot about JavaScript, and I plan to make more minimalist games with this framework. Interesting fact: Almost Pong doesn't load any assets, all sprites and sounds are generated with code. Happy to answer questions, and please let me know if you have any feedback on the game. Thanks!
2022 · lessmilk.com · its alternatives →
- 2MA
hi all, I've always wanted to make my own game, but couldn't afford a thousand-dollar adobe (flash+photoshop) license. I'm not a talented programmer, have no degree in CS. But I understand some elements of design. So I got me a copy of ImpactJS, and after about 5 months of steep learning curve (at least for me), I managed to come up with a game. I also integrated it with a highscore and badge system, similar to what you get at Kongregate. You need to login with Google/OpenID to earn badges/scores. link is: http://www.hotbazooka.com/privatejoe hope to hear some feedback/questions from you guys!
2011 · hotbazooka.com · its alternatives →
- 3IM
I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…
2022 · battle-of-flags.com · its alternatives →
- 4

Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go. If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)
2025 · abstractboardgames.com · its alternatives →
- 5IM
Hey there HN, I took a page from Wordle's mechanisms and made this game for fun for some friends and I. Check out Wheredle and let me know what you think of it! ↙ ↗ ↘ https://wheredle.xyz
2022 · wheredle.xyz · its alternatives →
- 6

- 7MF
I know everyone is a bit burned out on blockchain and cryptocurrency related stuff around these parts, but I've been working on as a side project for the last few months and thought you guys might be interested: https://cryptoempire.io/ It's still a bit buggy and incomplete (the mobile ux needs a lot of work, the leaderboard isn't functional yet, etc.), but I've reached a point where I'm not totally ashamed of sharing it :) Any feedback would be most welcome!
2018 · its alternatives →
- 8AW
So, me (dev) and my friend (designer) have been building a website/mobile app to help users manage their game library (think MyAnimeList, but games) for a little over a year. We launched with a very basic set of features, and have been slowing expanding since then. All the code is open source, and most of the things we implemented were direct feedback from users (e.g. being able to import games from Steam/PSN, and the Posts feature). We don't show ads or have any kind of subscription. This is just a hobby project. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, as honestly the hardest…
2025 · gamenode.app · its alternatives →
- 9AP
Most people like free things, some people like games. If you like 'm both then this might be something for you! I've made a website, a Discord bot, a Twitter bot, and a bunch of scrapers that roam the web to find free games out there. Just so that they can be found in one place by other people. I'm running this on my own server, so I'm curious as to how much traffic it can handle. The Discord and Twitter bots run on a fixed interval, so that shouldn't be much of a bottleneck. You can check it out online at: https://www.freegameisafreegame.com On Twitter at…
2020 · its alternatives →
- 10

I built a website for games that catch my eye or have something interesting going on. I made it for fun but then updating became a habit. Maybe you'll find your next "must-play" game here? GitHub repo: https://github.com/RaycatWhoDat/games-list
Nov 2025 · alistof.games · its alternatives →
- 11

- 12IB
I had an idea for this concept for a while and decided to build a little website around it. It's kind of a silly idea but I'm really curious to see how it plays out. If you're a particularly curious person, be warned. By submitting a payment to the game, you get to see how many other people were curious enough to play. You will be ranked based on your payment amount, and get to discover some interesting insights about the game's dynamics. Hope you like it
2024 · thecuriositygame.com · its alternatives →
- 13

- 14AS
Proud to share the very first release of my new game: Alverde - It's for my 4yo - Currently works only on desktop browsers - As long as I keep having fun building it, it will keep evolving Game: https://alverde.netlify.app/ Source: https://github.com/trumbitta/playroom Plans: https://github.com/trumbitta/playroom/discussions/20
2022 · its alternatives →
- 15

Hi, I’ve been working on Artifacts for the past 2 years, and it’s now ready to try. It’s a sandbox MMORPG where every action is done through a REST API. Instead of clicking to move, fight, gather, craft, or trade, you write code to control your characters. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, I’d be happy to hear them.
Jun 2026 · artifactsmmo.com · its alternatives →
- 16IH
Last night I had a stupid idea, and wanted to check if it is technically possible. Well, it is! In a nutshell: Emoji support for your website's URLs. yourwebsite.com/contact - booring yourwebsite.com/:phoneemoji: - cool! So I wrote a nodejs middleware that offers emoji support for your API, with 2 lines of code. (well if you count the installation 3 lines) Here's the project: https://www.npmjs.com/package/slashemoji I currently have support for the /contact and /about routes. Can you give me some ideas of what other URLs to cover, and what emojis to…
2019 · its alternatives →
- 17IT
I added Co-op online to Lazy Blocks. Using PeerJS & WebRTC, so no server. Hope you enjoy, let me know if you have and feedback, etc. Thank you, Adam -- EDIT Oh! -- Click the "Globe" icon to start online play -- Edit 2 Oh! -- I should mention - the board is infinite, you can scroll and pan and zoom in all directions -- and you can always find the other player with one click
2025 · lazyblocks.xyz · its alternatives →
- 18

Hi I've created a text-based RPG game in which you can experience different adventures and play interesting characters while the AI acts as a real time DM/story teller. There are multiple ways to interact with AI: 1) Input free will move 2) Input default move (affects resources) 3) Post a question to DM Also one more cool feature is that you can create your own adventure via simple form. Add scenes, add characters and make it public so other players are able to test it. I also plan to have 'competetive' side where players will pay some small fee to creators in crypto depending on…
2023 · landing.v3rpg.com · its alternatives →
- 19

Hello guys, I'm glad to present to you PlayAlgoShip, a web-based game where you solve fun algorithmic puzzles. The rules are simple, you need to find the correct algorithm that makes the ship collect all stars. If you succeed, you will unlock the next level! There are also live statistics like how many players are currently playing on your current level (you are not alone struggling!), the finish rate of the level, and how many players liked/disliked it. It's 100% free, I hope you will enjoy the experience!
2024 · playalgoship.com · its alternatives →
- 20

In my defense, my niece thinks it's hilarious (my sister is horrified). I wonder what HN thinks.. I welcome any and all feedback, but note that the app is in beta!
Jan 2026 · turdturf.app · its alternatives →
- 21

I haven't seen anything like this so I decided to build it in a weekend. How it works: You see a bunch of things pulled from Wikipedia displayed on cards. You ask yes or no questions to figure out which card is the secret article. The AI model has access to the image and wiki text and it's own knowledge to answer your question. Happy to have my credits burned for the day but I'll probably have to make this paid at some point so enjoy. I found it's not easy to get cheap+fast+good responses but the tech is getting there. Most of the prompts are running through Groq infra or hitting a cache…
Apr 2026 · sleuththetruth.com · its alternatives →
- 22AT
I have some experience building these kinds of games, so last year I put together a beginner's guide on them. It's been getting more attention recently with people wanting to make/experiment with these games during quarantine, so I figured I'd share to get feedback: - Part 1, Client: https://victorzhou.com/blog/build-an-io-game-part-1/ - Part 2, Server: https://victorzhou.com/blog/build-an-io-game-part-2/ - [demo] An example .io game: https://example-io-game.victorzhou.com/
2020 · its alternatives →
- 23

Bored ? play blooket with random people
2025 · blooketonline.replit.app · its alternatives →
- 24

I made a simple webservice to allow applications to be automatically aware of other users nearby. I made a demo of an HTML5 tankwars game to show it off. Play it here www.battlewith.me.uk Find the source code here https://github.com/fmstephe/location_server If anyone would be interested in using this to build something, mobile apps are the best target, give me a shout. I am very keen to see other people building on this.
2012 · github.com · its alternatives →
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