Alternatives
Products that do what EndBOX – A toy-like retro computer for EndBASIC does
Hello HN! EndBASIC has been featured a few times here before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31651881, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37495166), but today I want to show you something different that I've been working on for the past 6 months: the EndBOX. The idea is to create a toy-like device that: * boots fast into EndBASIC, * feels playful and hackable, * and is focused purely in experiencing (graphical / game) programming in simple terms. Just you and a BASIC command line---with some DOS touches. You'll find pictures and full details in the…
- 1IV
Hi everyone, When the pandemic started, I put QuickBASIC in front of my kids and could see them enjoy toying with writing some simple programs. Since then, I've been working on a side project to build a similar experience using modern technologies, with the goal of having a tool to teach the foundations of programming to (my own) kids. This is what EndBASIC is: is a retro-looking, BASIC interpreter with DOS-like features -- built for the web. The environment is designed to be minimalist in an attempt to reproduce the computing experience of the 1980s where the computers were simpler to…
2021
- 2IS
Hey everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster. I've just reached beta in my game BoxByte Lyte. -What is it- It's a free 3d arcade game for hardcore players that uses color matching in interesting ways. Also it's a one button game, well movement and one button. Cool huh? The final release will be free too. -What I need- This is a very challenging game, so I really need to balance the difficulty so that it's still hard but not impossible. It would be great just to hear your experiences of the game and how far in it you got. -Where can I report bugs?-…
2015
- 3IM
This is a little toy project of mine that lets you simulate digital logic graphs. It was inspired by Minecraft's Redstone and the Piet esolang. It's got some serious drawbacks-- you write circuits as PNGs and simulate them with a Python interface. It's slow to run and slow to experiment with. And it is certainly difficult to use for people with any kind of color blindness. But despite that, I hope this can still be a fun toy!
2022 · github.com
- 4
- 5WA
I've been working on a browser-based programming game where you write bots to explore procedurally generated dungeons in any WebAssembly-compatible language. It's like a minimalist roguelike where your character's brain is a program you write. There are pre-made libraries for C, Rust, Zig, Go, and AssemblyScript. The game mechanics are intentionally simple for now, but the challenge comes from building up your bot's understanding of the world from limited local information. Your code needs to handle mapping, pathfinding, and strategy while dealing with monsters and potentially hostile other…
2025 · shaneliesegang.com
- 6PA
A little game I made to show off an old project. The functionality of the CPU is derived entirely from simulated logic gates. All the operations and control flow are based on the underlying properties of the logic gates, and changing their operation leads to corresponding changes in function. The original game code is all python and it runs in the browser using wasm/pyodide. Not very mobile friendly
2024 · loreley.one
- 7CT
Hey gang, My names Ryan. I Develop Desktop applications, usually for Windows. I made this little Trainer application , if anyone wants to try it out. It lets you manipulate values in memory, in-order to hack stats, crafting materials, etc. If you like it, have any suggestions, or angrily yell about the console release, feel free to hmu. https://github.com/howzitkiffen/Cyber-Punk-Trainer (PS: Looking for work!)
2020
- 8
I built LunarBasic because I wanted a modern recreation of BlitzBasic from back in the day. I wanted it to have good step debugging features, and I wanted it to compile down to a native binary with no external dependencies. I do know there's an open source BlitzBasic out there but I wanted something simpler and more concise. It does have a "pro" feature set, but for the foreseeable future, anyone joining up will have the pro version in perpetuity (eg I'm not trying to sell anything here). It's early (v0.8.0). Would love feedback on the language design and compiler output, especially from…
13d ago · lunarbasic.com
- 9IB
VSCode extension with games (Snake, Plinko, slots), HN/LessWrong reader, and Pomodoro timer for AI coding wait times. Fake currency only. Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TouchGra... Built in a week with Claude Code after seeing Chad IDE get ratio'd for integrating real gambling. Happy to answer questions or get roasted on the code.
Dec 2025 · github.com
- 10E
Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
2024 · excalihub.dev
- 11WM
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
- 12YA
After adding "Human" as a LLM provider to OpenCode a few months ago as a joke, it turns-out that acting as a LLM is quite painful. But it was surprisingly useful for understanding real agent harnesses dev. So I thought I wouldn't leave anyone out! I made a small oss game - You Are An Agent - youareanagent.app - to share in the (useful?) frustration It's a bit ridiculous. To tell you about some entirely necessary features, we've got: - A full WASM arch-linux vm that runs in your browser for the agent coding level - A bad desktop simulation with a beautiful excel simulation for our computer…
Feb 2026 · youareanagent.app
- 13GA
Hi All, I felt like I was re-inventing the wheel by bolting similar channel architectures onto different Go structs repeatedly so I decided to extract some common types into into one library so that they would be easier to re-use: - oneshot - spsc - spmc - mpsc - mpmc - broadcast - watch The types are inspired by Rust channels so if you're coming from Rust they should feel familiar. So far I'm really enjoying using them but it'd be great to get some external feedback if you have time! https://github.com/amorey/gochan Andres
May 2026 · github.com
- 14JT
http://joysti.cc/ We built JoystiCC at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon over the past 24 hours. It is an open source game platform that uses human beings as the pieces in the game. You can see a video of our real-life Frogger game in action at our website http://joysti.cc/ What do you all think, how could you see this being used?
2011
- 15AF
Another Sunday afternoon project: add some pizzaz to your boring bare metal or virtual machine consoles! Written as a single Go binary; no dependencies. https://github.com/Fusion/modernfbv As usual, feedback please!
2022
- 16PA
Hi hn, Its been a while since my kid has been dreaming to make videogames, as you know, the entry bar is high, too many technical details are involved. A few months ago, we started making games, we have tried many different ways, from dragging blocks to write code with a high-level library to make it simple, it is still too much work. Getting into the AI boat, I decided to give it a try for making games, turns out that it works super nicely, still, you still have many technical concepts involved, what language should the game be written in? where do you store the file/assets? how do you…
2024 · playcodeai.com
- 17FA
i built a small site to collect memories of the things we grew up with: floppy drives, Game Boys, cassette tapes, forgotten software, classic games. the tech stack is React, Supabase and Vercel. fair warning: the items on there right now were seeded by AI to get things started. the goal is for it to grow through community submission. there's a submit form, no account needed. i'd love to gather some early feedback and get some more ideas. something i was thinking about in the future is having users create accounts to favorite items and comment their own personal experiences with items. right…
Mar 2026 · fossilware.tech
- 18A1
This toy retro synth installs and runs on esp32-s3 or p4 as an ELF file under BreezyBox firmware. It uses my work-in-progress immediate mode TUI library in C. Web-based version via emscripten: https://mini000.itch.io/beeper Source code: https://github.com/valdanylchuk/beeper Demo video running on Tanmatsu (esp32-p4): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCH9XYZ7QB0 The main challenge I was going for was actually to find a nice minimal set of controls for a subtractive synth. Usually there are 40-50 of them in "simple" synths; I ended up with 16.…
Jul 2026 · mini000.itch.io
- 19WM
Hi HN, I’ve spent the last decade building hardware products like humanoid robots, 3D printers, and self-driving tractors. I needed a tool to navigate technical documents faster, so I created one with friends. This tool helps with component search, cross-referencing, comparison, and debugging. We’d love your feedback, whether you find it useful or not. Thank you! Try it here: www.convergelab.ai
2024 · convergelab.ai
- 20SS
I built a realistic prod system under heavy pressure where you SSH in and solve real problems. You get your own server (real box) and have to fix various things up under fire. a friend told me it reminded them of DOOM for SREs, another called it a "flight simulator" because you can do anything (and reboot if you crash). someone else said it was like "an escape room for engineers", in that you have to find your own way around an unfamiliar box and solve puzzles. idk, maybe it's fun. try it! how it works: you get two Hetzner servers: a traffic generator (real traffic from NYC taxi data highly…
2025 · simstack.io
- 21IV
So, I've never written a line of Rust in my life. I wouldn't know an `&mut this` from a mutandis. But I saw a tweet about a month ago that said, in this new era of AI, you'd be able to just take a library that you love, throw a TUI around it, and call it an app. So I spent about 200 bucks last month, here's what I came up with: Imbolc is a DAW that runs entirely in your terminal. It talks to scsynth over OSC and ships 58 instruments and 39 effects. VSTs are a work in progress, also GarageBand loops if you want to recreate "Umbrella". The codebase is about 60k? lines of Rust across 5 crates,…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 22EA
Hi, I’m Nathan, an aspiring engineer who likes to tinker with hardware. Earlier this year, I started making hardware/electronic projects through various Hack Club programs. It was perfect, but most, if not all, of my projects were being withheld due to high customs and import fees, so I wanted to change that. Most of the price was actually assembling the PCB, and looking around the internet, I discovered the wonderful invention of the hotplate, and that I could make all of my PCBs myself for more than half the cost. Now, while I could have bought one on eBay, I decided to take up the…
Dec 2025
- 23PS
I was debating when to post this, but I've been using it locally in a variety of situations for several months and I think it's pretty stable (and usable!). There are more features I'd like to add, but I wanted to see if there was much interest before spending much more time on it right now.
2025 · github.com
- 24AM
I recently finished a round of tweaks on my barebones mud-server and thought HN might be interested. https://github.com/endgame/MudCore It sits somewhere between socketmud and a full mud like tbamud in that it handles all the socket work and telnet negotiation, but it makes no assumptions about anything else. The other interesting thing is that it can talk to other services using ZeroMQ. I'm interested in reactions, particularly in terms of coding style, documentation quality and so on. It's my main "presentation piece" so far, in that it's some of the first code I actually feel proud to…
2012
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →