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Products that do what A tutorial series on building multiplayer (.io) web games does
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/
- 1MA
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
- 2MW
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
- 3
- 4
- 5AC
Hello HN. This is a project me and some friends built at university in 2017. It was originally built in a rush, but we've added a few improvements over the years. It's a fun game to host at a demoparty and project on a big screen - We did that at Instanssi many times. The implementation is still rough, and suffers from the fast pace of the modern web - The frontend is likely very outdated, and the backend is built with Vapor 2 and Swift 3.1, both no longer supported. You can host this yourself, but it might be a bit of a pain to set up. The WebSocket protocol is fairly trivial to work out…
2022 · pixel.vkoskiv.com
- 6FO
Hello HN, I have started FBG some years ago when I moved to the Bay Area and could not find a simple, cross-platform, no-registration way to play board games with my friends back in my home country. I also wanted to make it simple to create multiplayer board games online for developers in their free time. Shortly after, I found out about boardgame.io with similar goals and decided to join forces with them. It became the engine of our board games, and we focused on publishing/serving them. To be fair with everyone and inspired by Wikipedia, we made the project a non-profit with GPLv3…
2021
- 7OS
We did a "Show HN post" 6 months back of our startup and we're very excited to show everyone how far we've come as well as the lessons we've learnt so far! It's been a roller-coaster so far and we think there's lot more of the same to come! We did apply for Ycombinator funding but got turned down :( But may re-apply soon :) For those that don't know, our startup is called Scirra and we make Construct 2 which is an HTML5 game engine (http://www.scirra.com). Our engine allows anyone to make HTML5 games without knowing any programming. It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based…
2012
- 8FO
This is a two man team and we're in full-on development of a new platform to assist in multiplayer games. We're looking to launch in about a month or two with an OpenID server accessible to customers (or they can use provider like Facebook/Twitter) and a couple cool multiplayer features. After we launch development will continue until we have a well-rounded API. We're primarily targeting HTML5+JS developers but the system will work with any language that can make RESTful API calls. We know there's some stiff competition out there but we're looking for feedback and what features may make…
2014 · playpi.net
- 9MF
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
- 10AG
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.
2022 · linkians.com
- 11AM
Hi everyone! I'm one of the developers behind this project. I wrote it with my two brothers, Daniel and Ricardo. For years the three of us have been curious about how multiplayer games work, which is why we decided to work on this project. Our goal was to gain a deep understanding of how different players can share the same 3D space, which is why we wrote our own tiny game engine instead of using something like Unity. We wrote the engine using C++ and OpenGL, and we then compiled it to WebAssembly using Emscripten so that it would run effortlessly on web browsers. We are really excited about…
2022 · play.moonlightmuseum.io
- 12WR
Hello HN!<p>We're running our own online course on how to make your own HTML5 computer games. We'd love to invite you to participate! http://ureddit.com/class/76284/making-games-with-construct2<p>We think learning to make your own computer games is a great introduction to programming.
2013
- 13FM
I went to the ADVANCE Hackathon in Cologne, Germany last weekend and this is a project I created together with @snnd and @newmetl. We used node.js and socket.io in the backend and HTML5 + JS in the frontend. The rules are simple: Make your and your teammates' gaming pieces fit into the highlighted area without talking to your mates. The levels are generated randomly, so they might be too easy or too hard from time to time. I'd like to emphasize that this game has been created within less than 24 hours! http://fititgame.com/ http://hackathon.advance-conference.com/ Feedback and criticism are…
2012
- 14IB
Hi HN, I'm one of the engine programmers at All Out Games (https://allout.game/), a multiplayer-first gaming UGC platform where creators can make and play games with their friends. For scripting we wanted our creators to be able to jump in and create game mechanics without having to think about networking. If a developer had to manually send packets to/from client/server to get things to happen then we have failed. It is particularly bad if you are using AI tools because they struggle to keep in mind what code is meant to run where (client, server, or both) and…
Mar 2026 · docs.allout.game
- 15MG
Hey HN! I’ve been learning about Multiplayer Game Networking to understand how clients and a server interact under different network conditions, similar to the classic demo by Gabriel Gambetta (if you haven't seen it, check it out https://www.gabrielgambetta.com/client-side-prediction-live-...). As part of this, I’ve been working on improving my own version of that demo: https://github.com/runawaytanks/demo Why I built this? I wanted to dive deeper into client-side prediction, network latency, and how to keep things in sync between the server and clients in…
2024
- 16AS
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
- 17AB
Hi everyone, This is a little tech demo I've been working on the past 2 years. It's been up for 1 year now, and has since had a few major updates. I have a soft spot for games with ranking systems, and I wanted an easy way for developers to create games with the competitive element abstracted away. The current games are built with ReactJS, so it's pretty easy to onboard if you are a web developer. All games developed for ACOS come with these features: - Real-time turn-based for browser - Simulator for game development - Client / Server architecture - Easy multiplayer with simple JSON…
2023 · acos.games
- 18PG
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
- 19IM
http://codewords.io/ I've been trying to get permission to run a game of it from the publisher and designer (CGE & Vlaada Chvátil) but I haven't heard back. I've found demonstrating that there's interest in what you're doing is the best way to get ahold of people. So.. Anyone interested in trying a massive game of Codenames over Twitch? Not quite "For Science!" more "For Engineering!" Which, let's be honest here, has a much better ring to it. If you'd like to know more, I put up an FAQ up here: http://codewords.io/faq/ If you'd like to sign up to help,…
2017
- 20IB
I'm working on the Survival Crafting RPG that you would have played on your Apple II back in the '80s. You can think of it as Valheim's gameplay crammed into the tile-based UI of the old Ultima games. It has a procedurally-generated open world with towns and NPCs to talk to, all the resource gathering, mining, crafting stuff you'd expect in a modern survival game, and some good old fashioned dungeon crawling to boot. I've been working on it off and on for the last several months. It's complete up through the Bronze Age (in Valheim terms). Let me know what you think!…
May 2026
- 21MG
This weekend I participated in my first hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt, and built an HTML5 game with a few people that I met at the event. We got honorable mention, putting us in the top 6 teams of 104 competing. I'm looking for some feedback on the game, so here it is: http://venturecrapital.us Source: https://github.com/wylieconlon/Venture-Crapital https://github.com/dmitric/venturecrapital-server
2011
- 22BA
I cofounded Hathora (https://hathora.dev/) last year and we've been working on making it easier for smaller teams and individual developers to build scalable multiplayer games. We think the serverless model is the simplest approach, allowing you to dynamically provision a new instance of your game server when users or your matchmaker requests a new session. We made this .io style demo to showcase this approach, and we're releasing the source code and documentation alongside with it.
2023 · bullet-mania.netlify.app
- 23IB
Hey HN, I'm Damiano Rodriguez, and I've been working solo on a project called Caisual Games. It's a free platform where anyone can create web games just by describing them with their voice. Here's how it works: You simply describe your game idea ("Make a cookie clicker game with 5 upgrades"), and the platform generates a playable web game in seconds using HTML and JavaScript. There's no coding required and no downloads needed—you can create and play directly in your browser. What's more, anyone can improve a published game, fostering a collaborative environment for game creation. The…
2024 · caisual.com
- 24HM
I made this as a pair programming exercise with o1-preview. o1 did most of the heavy lifting, through high level prompts, but eventually I needed to diverge from it to get to completion. My initial prompt was: --- I'm making a web app: It's like 4chan, but each thread starts with a gps coordinate. People can only post text and images. I want to build it with flask and sqlalchemy. I want just the backend and data model that supports these threads, anonymous users, and users that can register a permanent username. Write as much of it as you can for me. --- This produced a fully scaffolded…
2024 · mapchan.com
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