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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A game I made in 48 hours

Hi HN, I built a small game in just 24 hours for a 64x64 pixel art lowrez game jam. The result is soko64, a tiny Sokoban game written in Dart. This project was primarily a first test for a new web game library I've been developing for Dart (Bullseye2D). I wanted to see how quickly I could build a complete, playable game with it. You can play soko64 directly in your browser: https://joemanaco.itch.io/soko64 The source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/JochenHeizmann/soko64 Happy to answer any questions! :)

Timezone is a game created for Ludum Dare 44 where players navigate a zone where life serves as currency. Players must reach the exit before their life counter depletes to zero, earning time by collecting Life Capsules… 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 I made in 48 hours launched in 2019; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1IG

    I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  2. 2AF

    I've seen some interests in (simulation) video games here on HN so I thought I'd share a short version of our story. More than 6 years ago, me and my friend from university were playing around with an idea of making a game we always wanted to play. We worked on it on weekends but the progress was quite slow, especially due to so many dead ends and wasted effort. Eventually however, we solidified our direction and decided to take the risk to resign from our well paid SWE jobs and work on it full time. It took more than a year but yesterday we have finally released it on Steam:…

    2022 · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    I'm a software developer with 20+ years of experience but during this time I never programmed any games, but I really wanted to for the longest time. With the advent of AI coding agents I thought that this is the best time to try and so I've learned a bit of Phaser.js (a Javascript based game engine) and entered Beginner's Jam Summer 2025 - a game jam for beginners in the game dev industry that allows AI coding. After around 25-30 hours (working mainly after my full-time day job) I managed to submit the game I called "Tower of Time" (the theme of the jam was "Time Travel"). You can play it…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4MA

    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 →

  5. 5

    I had a dream on Nov 21, 2019 of a game. I woke up at 4:00pm that day, started programming it then, and 7 and 1/2 hours later, it was done. It's about you and a pink square going exploring. - otdav33/spelunko

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6AS

    FYI, I try to release something random on the 1st and 15th of every month, this was my latest. you can see my full list of projects on my twitter: https://twitter.com/lisperati/status/1543003744161484800

    2022 · dreambookgame.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Building a 1D-Pong game is a bit of a rite of passage at the Chaos Communication Congress. I was inspired by a version I saw at 38C3 and built my own interpretation for 39C3. Lots of people enjoyed playing it and even Elliot Williams featured it in his 39C3 Hackaday Podcast. And I can attest: it's truly fun because it's sooo simple at first sight - but wait until the speed increases... Not a bad work to fun created ratio for such a little project. I used the opportunity to play around with Claude Code on my preexisting codebase to publish a nice-ish repo on GitHub. It worked great without…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8AH

    Point-and-click adventure with only one scenary! We tried to approach Minimalism trough gameplay. Isolated on a single stage, with a few a possible actions, you must endure trough a 40 days survival until the Sgt. Burden's crew can be rescued. Enjoy the puzzle and stay alive! And let me know if you have escaped the planet!

    2013 · godswillbewatching.clay.io · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Dear Hacker News, I'm kindly asking for your participation in the open beta for my AI-managed mini-games website. Thank you in advance! For a limited time window, I'm setting the all-free feature flag to true. I hope you have a lot of fun exploring the AI's sense for games! Here and there, I tweaked it to help with visual consistency. I would be deeply grateful if you opted into analytics. $2,300 in API tokens... Cheers!

    Jun 2026 · minigames.world · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    Pantone▲66

    Pantone, an eye-messing mini-game built in 2+2 hours

    2014 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Quick10▲64

    A fun and entertaining arcade game

    2021 · damianmarkowski.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12MH

    2010 · sokogame.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13WM

    Hi Hacker News! My friend and I [1] would like to share with you something we did this week-end. We really like the idea of game jams like the Ludum Dare, and we’d like to participate, but it’s often complicated for us, as we are often limited by the rules inherent to this kind of competition: we have to be available at specific dates, and the rules doesn’t always work for us. For example: if you want to participate as a team in a Ludum Dare compo, you have 72h instead of 48h, and you are not required to publish your code. We realized that what we really like is: - To work together. - The…

    2014 · its alternatives →

  14. 14MT

    2011 · nko2-forward.herokuapp.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hello HackerNews, I'm Kaamkiya, the author of this program. It's a collection of minimal games made for terminals, like 2048, Hangman, and even two player games like pong. They're all text-based, but they can actually be quite fun. If you want to test it right now, you can do this: go run github.com/Kaamkiya/gg@latest I started this project out of boredom, honestly. I was bored, and when I'm bored I like to code or play video games. So I coded video games. I kept them really minimal though, because I'm not great at gamedev and thought it would be easier to contribute to text-based…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16MW

    Link: http://xoxo.cm The idea here was to build a multiplayer game with the lowest possible barrier to entry to get started. That is, no registration, no game setup, as few steps as possible to actually start playing. There's not much substance here right now and there's still a few bugs that need to be hammered out. I'm also thinking of expanding on the idea with some other simple games down the road. Any feedback or suggestions on the concept in general would be much appreciated.

    2011 · xoxo.cm · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Hi HN! This is my first game — something I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a small browser game built with Phaser 3, React, and the phaser template (https://github.com/phaserjs/template-react-ts/). I made it in 2 days (like 8 hours in total real time) using gemini-cli. About 90% of the code was generated with AI, but I learned a lot by making fine tweaks. It only works on PC since it’s a typical WASD + R (reload) shooter. I’d love feedback on: - Gameplay (is it fun, too hard?) - Ideas for new features Thanks in advance! ps: I used cubes as a prototype, but now I kind of…

    2025 · cubic-zombies.pages.dev · its alternatives →

  18. 18IM

    Thank you https://opengameart.org for your service. People like me who can't draw or compose music are in your debt. The game, "Glitch and Rush" has been made in a few hours here and there. I've been tinkering in GameDev for years, if not decades, but I never released anything. The goal here was simple: - come up with a core mechanic - implement a single level - add some polishing - RELEASE I hope you'll enjoy it. BTW, my best time is 2min23s (yes, I'm bad at my own game, it's ok, I'm ok).

    2022 · linkdd.itch.io · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Now on Apple TV with new shooter mode!

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hey everyone, I'm Fabio, a very long time lurker here. Today I want to celebrate and share with you, again, a game that I conceived more than 8 years ago. I shared it last week with all its history (if you're curious) [1], but it just stayed in the "shownew" and never reached the main "show" page, hopefully this time it'll do better (:crossed_fingers:)! What changed since last week? Today I've also published the mobile apps for both iOS and Android (last week it was just web), which are also my first mobile apps ever. So I believe it's still a worthwhile post and something to show :) I'd…

    2024 · fiftygame.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    A tribute to Faster Than Light made in two weeks for the OperaGX Gamejam - Garfounkel/A-Leaf-In-Space

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    canvas game, smartphone

    2020 · easylang.online · its alternatives →

  23. 23BA

    rts-blog : A blog about creating an RTS in WebGL

    2017 · emnh.github.io · its alternatives →

  24. 24DH

    Hi HN ! I built a text adventure as a way of learning Flask / app development. It runs in browser (hosted on a cheap DO droplet). I've been wanting more games like Animal Crossing that take place in real time, so this game has a real time clock and moon phase system. I've never shared something like this on here before so I hope this is OK. Happy to answer any questions about it!

    2024 · deadhorse.eurydice.me · its alternatives →

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