Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I built a game on my old phone without knowing what I was building

I'm calling this "Vibe Discovery" — distinct from vibe coding because I didn't know the requirements upfront. Started with "make something with the accelerometer" and discovered through 6 iterations that I wanted a WebGL marble game. The interesting part was the dev setup: Claude Code running in Termux on a Redmi Note 9 (4GB RAM). The same-device feedback loop — code, test accelerometer, react, iterate — made rapid discovery possible in a way that laptop-to-phone deployment wouldn't.

A WebGL marble game developed iteratively on a Redmi Note 9 using Claude Code running in Termux. The maker discovered the final concept through six iterations starting from an open-ended accelerometer challenge. The… 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
   A Marble Madness-inspired WebGL game we built for Netlify▲616

   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 →

2. 2
   Claude 2▲248

   It was quite interesting to vibe code this artifact. I learned some basic ideas about commitment scheme and hash cryptography in the half and hour spent on this. One of the few times vibe coding left me feeling enriched rather than drained. What do you think?

   2023 · claude.ai · its alternatives →

3. 3
   100 Vibe Coding▲351

   Hi HN, I have been making side projects since I was 14, and my team mate (this is his very first side project! Congrats!) designed and implemented the UI. Over time, people kept asking me how they could start coding and turn ideas into reality. So we had an idea. Coding is changing. With AI, the bottleneck is no longer writing every line by hand but knowing how to prompt effectively to reach a working outcome. Our objective is not to make people code better, or even learn to be a proficient software engineer, but just to keep it simple and start building. We want to remove fear and barriers…

   2025 · 100vibecoding.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Open Vibe▲311

   Open Vibe turns Claude Code, or your agent of choice, into the ultimate SaaS-building assistant, helping you understand the systems behind a production-ready SaaS while building your own app idea.

   May 2026 · openvibe.sh · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Vibe Pocket▲135

   Run AI agents like Claude Code, Codex, Opencode on mobile

   Dec 2025 · vibepocket.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Viberia▲146

   Hey HN, This is my take on the agent harness. Everything on an isometric map. Agents are grouped into "buildings" that run in a sequence or a loop; e.g., the CodeForge has an agent that writes a PRD, another one that implements, and a third that reviews. Everything is customizable, you build your own buildings/teams however you want. It's a Tauri app, really light (about 8x less energy than the closest competitor I benchmarked, so it actually runs from a coffee shop on battery). It's macOS only for now, but ping me if you are willing to test the Windows or Linux version. I've been…

   May 2026 · getviberia.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   An algorithmic audio landscape▲193

   This is an web audio experiment I've been wanting to do for a long time. Basically an ambient music composition, but all the sound elements are laid out in space, and that musical space can be explored freely. It's definitely inspired by in-world music that sometimes appears in games. I basically took that concept, keeping the music aspect, and dropping the entire "game" aspect. I also turned it into a more "traditional" non-interactive album, but since I started with code, why not program the whole thing? Had a blast making the entire album from code, the complete source for the album is…

   2024 · ambient.garden · its alternatives →

8. 8VC
   Vibe Coding a static site on a $25 Walmart Phone▲76

   Hi! I took a cheap $25 walmart phone and put a static server on it? Why? Just for a fun weekend project. I used Claude Code for most of the setup. I had a blast. It's running termux, andronix, nginx, cloudflared and even a prometheus node exporter. Here's the site: https://walmartphone.stetsonblake.com/

   Jan 2026 · stetsonblake.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Vibe Prolog▲44

   Like a lot of people I got the $250 Claude Code credit and didn't use it up. I decided to try to use it up over the weekend using (mostly) my phone and vibe coded a Prolog interpreter. Now I'm seeing how far I can push it.

   Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    madewithvibe▲18

    A showcase of vibe-coded projects to inspire your next build

    2025 · madewithvibe.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Vibe coding from your phone▲8

    We built this on a whim for a hackathon, but I'm thinking to turn it into a real thing! Original GitHub repository at: https://github.com/Flux159/claude-code-go The desktop app exposes an interface to Claude Code, so you can run Claude Code from your phone.

    2025 · vibecodego.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    VibecodedHub▲18

    The discovery platform for AI-built products

    Mar 2026 · vibecodedhub.com · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Pocket by Meta▲69

    Vibe-code games, then share them like TikToks

    Aug 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Vibeloop▲8

    Hey HN! I am building Vibeloop, a platform where you write small programs — canvas animations, GLSL shaders, Phaser games, charts — and they show up as discoverable cards. https://vibeloop.app The card types are: - Canvas — JS with a setup()/draw() loop - Shader — GLSL fragment shaders - Phaser — full Phaser 3 games in a card - Chart — powered by Chart.js - Markdown — with LaTeX math Some things I think are interesting: - Cards can use audio (Web Audio API beep/noise synthesis), mouse/touch input, uploaded images as textures - A watchdog kills runaway code (infinite…

    Jan 2026 · vibeloop.app · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Vibe-check skill▲11

    Howdy friends. I've been a zero to one product manager for 12 plus years and along the way I kept borrowing pieces from different discovery frameworks until I had a methodology of my own, one that actually raises the odds of an idea succeeding. This does not replace user interviews obviously, but it leads you in the right direction. Looking forward for your feedback

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    I vibe-coded a custom WebGPU engine for my MMO▲5

    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. 17
    Vibe Roulette▲10

    Spin and get random app ideas to vibe code

    Jan 2026 · promptroulette.dev · its alternatives →

18. 18
    I'm organizing a vibe coding game dev competition▲7

    Hi everyone, I just saw a vibe coded game on HN, and thought maybe I should post about this here. I'm organizing a vibe coding game dev competition called Vibe Jam. Last year we did it too and there was 1000+ games submitted. This year the deadline is May 1 and you can submit your games until then. There's $35,000 in prizes with the Gold prize being $20,000. Let me know what you think! -Pieter

    Apr 2026 · vibej.am · its alternatives →

19. 19
    I made a Mario Galaxy game with Claude Code and Three.js in 53 days▲7

    I'm the developer. Happy to share the process and learnings. Architecture: - Custom SoA ECS for cache-friendly iteration, zero allocations in hot loops. Benchmarked against bitECS/miniplex. - Process manager inspired by Game Code Complete's but data-oriented so processes are pure data, systems contain the logic. - Multi-field gravity with 5 types (point, parallel, segment, cylinder, convex hull) with spring-damped transitions between fields. - Rapier3D WASM with SIMD. Gravity-aware fake shadow system for playability. - WebGL 2 shared context between Three.js and Pixi.js. - Debug editor…

    Apr 2026 · supertommy.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Vibe Remote – Code from your bed or the park with Claude Code/Codex▲7

    I built Vibe Remote because I wanted to code from my bed or the park without lugging a laptop around. With tools like Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini-cli, we don't need a full IDE for every task anymore. Vibe Remote turns your phone into a powerful remote console. Why it’s more than just a chat: * AI Agent Hub: Zero-config support for Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. * Built-in Web Preview: View your localhost services directly inside the app. Essential for UI debugging. * Full Session Management: Start a task on your Mac, grab your phone, and monitor progress from a cafe. * Dev Ops: Manage…

    Mar 2026 · vibe-remote.com · its alternatives →

21. 21VC
    Vibe coding creates a mess, but it can be solved faster▲5

    I've been using Cursor, Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Claude and what not since quite some time now, and we are at a stage where we can just "vibe code" whole apps from idea to execution in a few prompts. I tried this personally to create some side projects that solved little problems for me. But I always got stuck at a point where it just goes into an infinite loop of issues and can't solve the issue by itself. Well I'm a developer, so it's easier for me to dive into the code and solve the problem myself, but that would take a hell lot of time to understand all the code AI wrote for me. If I keep…

    2025 · its alternatives →

22. 22WV
    We vibe coded our team's issue tracker, knowledge base, telemetry board▲8

    Hi HN, I'm the CEO at https://replay.io. We've been working on time travel debugging for web development for a while (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28539247) and more recently an AI app builder that uses that debugger to get past problems instead of spinning in circles (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43258585). We've gotten to where we can pretty easily build apps to replace business-critical SaaS tools, some of which we're now using internally: * We built our own issue tracker to keep track of all our development projects, tickets, bug…

    Dec 2025 · its alternatives →

23. 23
    I built an app for vibe-coding games▲5

    AI game maker. Got a game idea? Just describe it and start playing in seconds. Create game-ready art and animated sprite sheets in any style. Browse and play community games. Share your games with friends.

    Dec 2025 · playmix.ai · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Vibefolio – a place to showcase your vibecoded projects▲13

    Over the last months, more people are shipping small apps, experiments, and side-projects at a much higher pace. I'm one of them and initially created a showcase page for myself to track them but this week decided to create something for others. Happy to read feedback on how to improve it further!

    Mar 2026 · vibefolio.link · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →