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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Doom (1993) Playable in a GitHub Readme

I just had this really fun idea of making a playable version of DOOM on my GitHub profile after building "Doom" in a QR code last year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43729683) and I finally stopped procrastinating to try and build it. DoomMe is DOOM E1M1 map that can run on GitHub's markdown viewer which doesn't support javascript, web assembly or even iframes it works with a stateless engine with a capture of every possible position in the map (with 64 unit distance) captured in 4 directions and stitched together using graph logic with 8000+ WebP images and markdown…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  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. 2D1

    I made a Doom source port that runs within a PDF file. I was inspired by the recent HN post about Tetris in a PDF (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645218) and I wondered if I could get Doom to run using a similar method. It turns out that old versions of Emscripten can compile C to asm.js code that will happily run inside the limited JS runtime of the PDF engine. I used the doomgeneric (https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric) fork of the original Doom source, as that made writing the IO fairly easy. All I had to do was implement a framebuffer and…

    2025 · doompdf.pages.dev · its alternatives →

  3. 3KR

    I got DOOM running in KiCad by rendering it with PCB traces and footprints instead of pixels. Walls are rendered as PCB_TRACK traces, and entities (enemies, items, player) are actual component footprints - SOT-23 for small items, SOIC-8 for decorations, QFP-64 for enemies and the player. How I did it: Started by patching DOOM's source code to extract vector data directly from the engine. Instead of trying to render 64,000 pixels (which would be impossibly slow), I grab the geometry DOOM already calculates internally - the drawsegs[] array for walls and vissprites[] for entities. Added a…

    Nov 2025 · mikeayles.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4TP

    This is the inevitable post after jeff_harris released restful-doom https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14919534 twitch-plays-doom is a Python Twitch IRC->restful-doom proxy to control doomguy with a staggering 8 second delay. The project was Saturday night's 'I wonder if I can make this work' session. Since it's been live there has been a team of four successfully make it to half way through E01M01. I've since added godmode to the chat (you can guess the command). This was fun, hope others get some enjoyment out of it. Twitch Stream/Chat…

    2017 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    A Simple Unix-like operating system. Contribute to ozkl/soso development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6OC

    2024 · ludocode.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hi HN, I’ve been working on Gore – a port of the classic Doom engine written in pure Go, based on a ccgo C-to-Go translation of Doom Generic. It loads original WAD files, uses a software renderer (no SDL or CGO, or Go dependencies outside the standard library). Still has a bit of unsafe code that I'm trying to get rid of, and various other caveats. In the examples is a terminal-based renderer, which is entertaining, even though it's very hard to play with terminal-style input/output. The goal is a clean, cross-platform, Go-native take on the Doom engine – fun to hack on, easy to read,…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8DI

    2024 · chrisdalke.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
  10. 10

    Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers. Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users. The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view…

    2024 · 5-million-devs.netlify.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uygzEmdLw Hi HN, I built a RISC-V emulator that implements the RV32IM instruction set and a minimal syscall interface to run DOOM. A few weeks ago, I got my first output with a simple hello world assembly program. Since then I have been working tirelessly to get DOOM to run. I needed to figure out how to run C programs first, and came across newlib, which allows the underlying environment to implement the syscall stubs one by one until the programs run. I have also added ELF loading, but currently only a single `PT_LOAD` segment is…

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    A simple text-based adventure game. Contribute to skx/lighthouse-of-doom development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Playground for the fire effect from DOOM. Really simple algorithm and all experiments are welcome! - filipedeschamps/doom-fire-algorithm

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    An experimental interactive README experience! Contribute to veggiedefender/typing development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Quake (1996), faithfully ported to dependency-free safe Rust and compiled to WebAssembly — play the shareware episode in your browser.

    13d ago · quake-srp.pages.dev · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    TrueType fonts have a hinting VM that grid-fits glyphs. It has a stack, storage area, conditionals, function calls, and it turns out it's Turing-complete. So I built a raycasting engine in the hinting bytecode. The glyph "A" in the font has 16 vertical bar contours. The hinting program reads player coordinates from font variation axes via GETVARIATION, does DDA ray marching against a tile map in the storage area, and repositions bar heights with SCFS. It ends up looking like a crude Wolfenstein-style view. Small visuzlization:…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Extracted Maps of the DOS Game Test Drive 3. Contribute to s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps development by creating an account on GitHub.

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A simple text-based adventure game. Contribute to skx/lighthouse-of-doom development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Explore Quake/GoldSrc maps in your browser. Contribute to sbuggay/bspview development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    GitQuest▲187

    Hey HN, I built Git Quest, it reads your public GitHub history and turns it into an idle RPG character. How it works: - Your most-used language determines your class (TypeScript → Paladin, Python → Sage, etc.) - Commits generate Power and XP - Your character auto-battles dungeons while you code – no active play needed - Enemies drop loot across 5 rarity tiers - Live leaderboard ranks developers It only reads public GitHub data. I built it because I wanted something that rewards coding consistency without being another "streak" tracker. The idle mechanic means prolific coders naturally…

    2025 · gitquest.dev · its alternatives →

  21. 21RG

    Hi HN, I built https://rebrain.gg. It's a website which is intended to help you learn new things. I built it for two reasons: 1. To play around with different ways of interacting with a LLM. Instead of a standard chat conversation, the LLM returns question forms the user can directly interact with (and use to continue the conversation with the LLM). 2. Because I thought it would be cool to have a site dedicated to interactive educational content instead of purely consuming content (which I do too much). An example of a (useful-for-me) interactive conversation is:…

    Feb 2026 · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    An experimental DOOM Node Builder, written in C++. Contribute to 7thSamurai/nodebuilder development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Hello HN, Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components). It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL. Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect. Audio, graphics, scripting,…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    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 →

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