Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Four months of indie game dev
Inane commentary and development progress by Tom Horn
Tom Horn documents his four-month journey developing an indie game, sharing progress updates and humorous commentary about the process. The project showcases game development work condensed into a video format, though… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Four months of indie game dev launched in 2013; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1AF
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 →
- 26M
2013 · playadrift.com · its alternatives →
- 3IS
2012 · ektomarch.com · its alternatives →
- 4IT
2019 · s-poony.github.io · its alternatives →
- 5
It took me 20 months to develop it in my spare time. I used Unity game engine, I did not have any game dev experience before. It was more complex that I thought at the begining, I spent lots of time on promotion, marketing, founding company, learning about the legal aspects of different parts, for example music. Some parts were easier than I expected. Unity makes it very easy to build for all three operating systems (Win, MacOs, Linux), I am not sure why more game devs are not using this possibility. I also like working on Steam as distribution system. It is not exactly easy for a newcomer,…
2022 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →
- 6MA
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 →
- 7IB
2014 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Phil Chu shares his game development experiences.
2015 · gamedevslikeyou.libsyn.com · its alternatives →
- 9
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 →
- 10MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 11
Discovering gamedev through JavaScript and Phaser.
2016 · dadsindev.com · its alternatives →
- 12
- 13IN
2021 · indiedevs.net · its alternatives →
- 14
1 month in, and launching The Side Project Accelerator
2016 · hackingui.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Reflections on an epic Kickstarter campaign for a tiny game
2016 · happymittengames.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Going from first time designer to published and full time
2016 · happymittengames.com · its alternatives →
- 17
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 →
- 18
2015 · forums.toucharcade.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Well HN, I've finally produced something I think is worthy of sharing, but I didn't do it "in a weekend". Yeah, it's an iOS puzzle game. And yeah, it's a game I built because I wanted to play it rather than based on market research, so all this sort of makes it the antithesis of a popular HN post. But whatever. Still hoping for some of that patented (har har) expert HN feedback. Critique any part of it except the music. Also, PM me for upgrade codes, or I can post some here if there's any interest. Download (it's free):…
2012 · itunes.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Spiderdash▲42I made this game ten years ago without framework. It took my free time for months to develop. I find myself having fun playing it today. Maybe some will enjoy
2023 · spiderdash.standupweb.net · its alternatives →
- 21IM
Play games, publish yours, and build with the indie.fun SDK.
2022 · modd.io · its alternatives →
- 22
this is an open-source project. the MVP to end all MVPs. made by me, a teenage developer angry at FAANG employees for creating a soulless, consumer-oriented world. The future is in creation, and the future is in teaching people to slam shit together with ChatGPT. Welcome to the start. :P
2024 · 48hr.dev · its alternatives →
- 23IM
I am a non-hacker "idea guy" with zero discernible talent. Like most, the story starts with me doing things the hard way. I dreamt of a tool that would save me countless hours. Like most of my ideas, it was supposed to die in a couple of hours, but this one had some legs.... "If I needed this, surely others did too" kept looping in my head. Could I get this built? Could I build it myself? Nah...too lazy to learn how, but before I did anything, I had to promise myself one thing: No more ideas! If ideas were sit-ups, I would have a six pack instead of this tire. It was a constant mental…
2012 · readwriteweb.com · its alternatives →
- 24SF
Hi HN! I’ve been building a 2D game using a custom engine I wrote from scratch – no Unity, no frameworks. It’s fully self-funded and will be released commercially on Steam. Engine source code (MIT): http://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo I’d love feedback on the gameplay, visuals, performance, or anything else. Thanks!
2025 · bereprobate.com · its alternatives →
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