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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Cozy Quest – MMO networking architecture

I'm building a cozy multiplayer game engine (very early stages - just a few days in!) combining Elixir, Go, and Godot to achieve sub-50ms latency while maintaining a warm, welcoming feel. My architecture uses Elixir/Phoenix for fault-tolerant session management, Go for high-performance game state sync (1ms tick rate), and Godot for client-side prediction. I've implemented lock-free data structures, SIMD-optimized physics, and binary protocols with delta compression. Quick note: the website/login aren't functional yet - this is a work in progress! Here's my technical deep-dive into…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Cozy Quest – MMO networking architecture launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha. I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API. This…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Modd.io is a collaborative game editor that runs in browser. It's kind of like Figma for game dev. We made this engine low-code and multiplayer-first, so developeres can quickly prototype casual multiplayer games. I hope some of you guys will find this useful. Would love to hear feedback also. Thank you. Engine Demo: https://www.modd.io

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 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. 4AO

    I made a game (https://polyfight.io/) which revolves around a player (a tank) leveling up and upgrading by killing shapes and other tanks (partially inspired by https://diep.io). It has a bunch of features, a vast number of tanks, an inbuilt chatting system, clans to make teams with your friends, a colour scheme maker, controllable sandboxes which can be public or private, a last man standing gamemode, and an inbuilt 1v1 system with its own ELO rankings and a global leaderboard. The game has a few players right now, and I'd hope to spread the joy players have with…

    2024 · polyfight.io · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hello HN! The day has finally come to stop adding features and start sharing what I've been building the last 5-6 months. It's a bit of CrewAI, OpenDevon, LangFuse/Cloud all in one, providing devs who prefer TypeScript an integrated framework thats provides a lot out of the box to start experimenting and building agents with. It started after peeking at the LangChain docs a few times and never liking the example code. I began experimenting with automating a simple Jira request from the engineering team to add an index to one of our Google Spanner databases (for context I'm the…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Earlier this year, we released our open-source game engine [0] built with Rust, WebAssembly, and WebGPU. Today, we’re happy to announce the Ambient platform, which brings web deployment, server hosting, and more to the runtime. With Ambient, you can make a game, deploy it to the browser in one command, share your URL and instantly play with others, no downloads or installs needed. Our WASM use is innovative; it is being used as both a sandboxed runtime for user code, and as a way to run the entire Ambient runtime in the browser. This, paired with our ECS data model, enables a highly modular…

    2023 · ambient.run · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    A voxel MMORPG sandbox

    2015 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Another fast paced multiplayer game

    2016 · wings.io · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    How an MMO studio created a great competitive game

    2015 · polygon.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Around three years ago, I was reminiscing about how much I loved playing Neopets as a kid. Meanwhile, I was also looking for a project to better learn Rust and SolidJS. So.. I figured making my own virtual pet browser game would be a fun way to practice! Since then, I’ve been working on it nearly every day, and.. it’s grown quite a bit! Here are some bulleted lists for your convenience: Technical Details: * Backend monolithic Rust server runs on a single $5/month VPS * Lean frontend with just 3 dependencies (SolidJS, Solid Router, and Mutative) * Around 130,000 combined lines of code…

    2025 · mochia.net · its alternatives →

  11. 11IB

    You speak to the Oracle of Aion, an ancient entity with the power to affect the dungeon. If your wish is worthy, he may grant it, and the dungeon remember your wish forevermore. The changes will be visible for all players, forever. Play now in the browser! Free and no registration. Disclaimers: I singlehandedly made this game, it is in a crude state, the oracle works 50% of the time. Also, since your wishes turn into code automatically via AI, and literally anyone can wish whatever he wants, dont expect a polished experience. However, nothing like it exists and its free, enjoy the chaos!…

    May 2026 · aion.quest · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hello everyone! I've finally finished my latest side project - a RPG game made in Blazor. It started as a small project to learn some Blazor (I'm .NET dev but kept mainly to backend and ASP.NET). I had such a good time coding it that at some point I decided to make a full featured game out of it. I might've have bitten off more that I could chew as RPGs have so many systems and elements but overall I think it worked out well, especially for a single person project. I want to hop on the next project soon so any comments/questions/tips than can make me better really appreciated!

    2024 · whimsicalwyrm.itch.io · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    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 →

  14. 14

    Hi HN! This has been a fun little side project. You simply click to shoot arrows at falling circles (and the arrows of other players!) Hopefully, I make other social & simple games over time. I had to struggle with all the usually problems of game synchronization. It was a fun way to explore phoenix & elixir. You'll notice the signature claude code purple gradient. I'll be honest, I couldn't have built it without AI! If you really like it you can vote with your wallet and toss me $1.99. Or not!!

    Dec 2025 · wingspan.games · its alternatives →

  15. 15AM

    For the past few months, I’ve been hacking together Hive: a retro-style virtual workspace for devs who love building in public. It’s a bit rough but already has some cool features: - AI-powered presence to represent you when you’re offline. - Live video streaming to showcase your work in real time. - VS Code integration to broadcast your status live. - GraphQL API for full customization and hackability (such as using your own agents) - Web3 donations to support and get support from other builders. In this demo, you can claim a desk by walking up to it and pressing E, then personalize it with…

    2024 · joinhive.devmode.digital · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    It took me about a week to vibe code this 3D game engine with Opus 4.6 that I intend to use as a replacement for Three.js and React Three Fiber in my browser MMORPG, Mana Blade. I was not expecting to be able to reach that point so easily, but pretty much every feature took somewhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour - 1 to 3 prompts on average. It is vibe-coded in the sense that I haven't looked at the code, but I am very careful with my prompts and constantly have Claude reviewing the codebase, looking for performance and code quality improvements. It can reach 2000 draw calls on recent…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17AW

    I’ve spent the last few days prototyping a browser-based game engine stack designed for instant-load, "Roblox-for-Teens" style deployment. The goal is to lower the floor for AA indie devs who want high-fidelity physics and instant web distribution without the overhead of Unity or a heavy Godot export. The Stack Engine: A headless WASM/WebGPU implementation. I’m currently using custom flags and selective streaming to bypass standard browser memory and execution limits. Physics: I’ve ported Jolt (Guerrilla Games) but modified the solver to mimic the original Blam! engine (Bungie/Halo…

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    I'm Tyler - the solo operator of Quanta Intellect based in Portland, Oregon. I recently participated in Nous Research's Hermes Agent Hackathon, which is where this project was born. I've used agents extensively in my workflows for the better part of the last year - the biggest pain point was always the browser. Every tool out there assumes a human operator with automation bolted on. I wanted to flip that - make the agent the primary driver and give the human a supervisory role. Enter: Vessel Browser - an Electron-based browser with 40+ MCP-native tools, persistent sessions that survive…

    Mar 2026 · quantaintellect.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hi HN, I’m one of the devs behind StarDesk, a P2P-first remote desktop we’ve been building for ~1 year. We started this partly out of frustration: some popular RDP tools haven’t seen meaningful updates in a long time, and long-standing issues are often left unaddressed. As devs, we really dislike software that stagnates once it “works well enough”. StarDesk is our attempt to do it differently. What we focus on: -P2P by default (relay as fallback) -Low RTT + low jitter > chasing max bitrate -Encoder / input path tuned for real-time interaction -Modern E2EE (TLS/DTLS) UX-wise, setup…

    Jan 2026 · stardesk.net · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    About a month ago, I shared the Day 1 prototype of this project (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46448670). It has since evolved into a somewhat more polished "Slot-Machine Deckbuilder." I also recently moved the project from qq-pwn.com to alt-qq.com. I did this mid-development specifically to see if I could migrate a live player base and session states without losing people. The Design Challenge: The core of the game is a "One-Armed Bandit" dungeon crawler. The challenge is balancing the "house always wins" nature of slots with the player agency required for a good…

    Jan 2026 · alt-qq.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    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 · stravaeger.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Over the past few months, as we scaled our internal AI Agents, we hit a dead end: Running LLM-generated arbitrary code in Docker is basically running naked on security due to container escape risks. But using full traditional VMs takes minutes to boot and eats too much memory to support high-density concurrency. We loved the developer experience of SaaS sandboxes on the market, but they are closed-source, expensive, and have too high a barrier to entry for self-hosting. So, our team decided to build our own. After months of grinding, using RustVMM and KVM, we built a blazing-fast,…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    High-performance, No-OOP 2D engine & MMORPG in TypeScript

    May 2026 · theworldtable.ai · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hi there, looking for feedback on my new project "Featherless.AI" The idea is to allow users to run all the models on hugging face instantly. Via the OpenAI API compatible endpoint. Why? Because its a real chore to download models and spin up GPUs, especially if you want to test multiple models. Not to mention GPUs cost multiple dollars an hour to rent. And if we want more people to use open source AI, we got to make it easier for them to try and play with all of them. So what if instead of spinning up dedicated GPUs per model (which is what every provider is doing) We can startup a LLM…

    2024 · featherless.ai · its alternatives →

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