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Products that do what I built a site that turns your Steam gaming hours into a RL skill tree does

Hey, A bit of context.. So I think last week was my last straw, I hit 8k hours with dota and holy ** It finally hit me how much time I wasted on that game. I'm a software developer, I always wanted to develop something and put it out but was scared shitless to do so, I was kinda afraid to get bad traction, to fail or even worse to be completely ignored. so I decided to address two of these issues at once, stop playing dota and spend the weekend building a website that let you see what you could've done with your gaming hours. As an avid gamer for the last 20+ years, I know that it's only…

  1. 1MA

    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

  2. 2GO
  3. 3MC

    I've been building mmerch.com alone for roughly the past two years part time. I'm really hoping I can get some reviews/critiques on it. Thanks! mmerch.com

    2013

  4. 4IB

    I built a website for games that catch my eye or have something interesting going on. I made it for fun but then updating became a habit. Maybe you'll find your next "must-play" game here? GitHub repo: https://github.com/RaycatWhoDat/games-list

    Nov 2025 · alistof.games

  5. 51M

    Howdy, long time HN'er. Spent ~20 years in FAANG and startups, got the pink slip during a big layoff wave in spring 2023. That's ok, I was about to quit anyway :) Finally got back to a lifelong goal of mine, making an "indie" game. (Indie is subjective, but you get the drift.) So, here it is: Ballionaire, a "fast-paced pachinko roguelike where strategy meets physics to create outrageous wealth!" My influences were: Plinko(TM), Luck Be A Landlord, and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. I was really fortunate because localthunk, the dev behind Balatro, noticed my game during its first month of…

    2024 · store.steampowered.com

  6. 6AQ

    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

  7. 7M4

    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

  8. 8MF

    I know everyone is a bit burned out on blockchain and cryptocurrency related stuff around these parts, but I've been working on as a side project for the last few months and thought you guys might be interested: https://cryptoempire.io/ It's still a bit buggy and incomplete (the mobile ux needs a lot of work, the leaderboard isn't functional yet, etc.), but I've reached a point where I'm not totally ashamed of sharing it :) Any feedback would be most welcome!

    2018

  9. 9IB

    Hi HN, here is my humble weekend project. I couldn’t find any similar utilities online that would let me download all of my chess games, so I decided to make one. It’s definitely imperfect, so please let me know if you have any feedback!

    2023 · chessgamedownloader.fly.dev

  10. 10FA

    Hey everyone, I'm Fabio, a very long time lurker here. Today I want to celebrate and share with you, again, a game that I conceived more than 8 years ago. I shared it last week with all its history (if you're curious) [1], but it just stayed in the "shownew" and never reached the main "show" page, hopefully this time it'll do better (:crossed_fingers:)! What changed since last week? Today I've also published the mobile apps for both iOS and Android (last week it was just web), which are also my first mobile apps ever. So I believe it's still a worthwhile post and something to show :) I'd…

    2024 · fiftygame.com

  11. 11MF

    Hi! Long time reader, first time submitter. I've finallllyy got my first webapp online. It's been a long time coming, I started it over a year ago and just been an hour here, a couple of hours here, and a period of a couple of months of nothing. I first wrote it as a way to learn some python it sort of grew to fill a need I had. It's at a point now where I'd LOVE some feedback as I am going round in circules. Please, it's free, just hit the home page, plugin in a name/email and url you want to links checked on. If you use the name 'DeleteMe' I will remove the account after a week, so feel…

    2012

  12. 12SE

    Hey, I've shared this game while it was still a work in progress in one of the Tell HN threads. I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of people tried it, and I got some positive feedback and constructive criticism. Anyway, I found a gamedev library I really like - Kaplay [1]. What I like about it is that easy things are easy. Meaning I could have fun building the game without learning (or fighting) a new tool. I always wanted to make games, but this is the first one I actually did. And I have to tell you - game development sparks joy! It combines so many things (game design, programming,…

    Jan 2026 · muffinman-io.itch.io

  13. 13IB

    This site was born out necessity. I needed a break from the internet we know today: clickbait, politics, low quality content, breaking news, AI summaries Such a breadth of information but so little depth Now I spend (too much of) my time here, going deep. Just when I need to scratch that itch. But I keep coming back because it actually makes me a better engineer. Oh, and I made the site. Right. Anyways, I hope you enjoy crawling the blogs as much as I have. Enjoy! And PLZ reply with any feedback. I am here to make this site better. It will always be free.

    2025 · codecrawl.co

  14. 14IM

    Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon

    2024 · kopage.com

  15. 15GA

    I wanted to learn more about RAG implementations, so I built something to solve the constant digging through manuals whenever we play a game. It's fairly simplistic, but actually has worked pretty well for some of these conflicts. Everythings Open Source on GitHub if you're curious (or have ideas), and I'd love to hear feedback from fellow boardgamers!

    2024 · gamegame.ai

  16. 16AP

    Most people like free things, some people like games. If you like 'm both then this might be something for you! I've made a website, a Discord bot, a Twitter bot, and a bunch of scrapers that roam the web to find free games out there. Just so that they can be found in one place by other people. I'm running this on my own server, so I'm curious as to how much traffic it can handle. The Discord and Twitter bots run on a fixed interval, so that shouldn't be much of a bottleneck. You can check it out online at: https://www.freegameisafreegame.com On Twitter at…

    2020

  17. 17IA

    I call my Portfolio Website "The Best Terminal-Inspired Portfolio Website on The Internet™" As one of the games, I decided to play around and add this - just use "gameoflife" as the command and try it out, I'd love to hear thoughts :)

    2025 · kuber.studio

  18. 18IC

    Stack: WASM + Rust + Macroquad I saw that a company had posted a cool job ad where you had to apply directly via a REST API. That gave me the idea to gamify my resume as well. Since I was bored, I vibe coded a bit and voilà, the result was ready. I think it's something new and fun that might put a smile on people's faces. (Please don't spam my email address, but feel free to send me an email with your high score if you want!)

    Feb 2026 · breezko.dev

  19. 19IB

    I had an idea for this concept for a while and decided to build a little website around it. It's kind of a silly idea but I'm really curious to see how it plays out. If you're a particularly curious person, be warned. By submitting a payment to the game, you get to see how many other people were curious enough to play. You will be ranked based on your payment amount, and get to discover some interesting insights about the game's dynamics. Hope you like it

    2024 · thecuriositygame.com

  20. 20AG

    Hey HN, I made https://linkians.com which is a game where all the action and state is contained in the url. The game involves taking care of little pets (emojis) that live in your url bar. Kind of like tamagotchi or sims. Feed them, play with them, and watch out for enemies! There's no server, just emojis in the url and client-side logic. Any linkians url using the supported emojis is a valid game state so you can save your game, or type out your own url and send it to a friend. I'd appreciate any feedback.

    2022 · linkians.com

  21. 21KI

    I’m nervous, announcing this, as it isn’t ready to ship out to the general public yet, and I haven’t had any feedback at all from anyone, I’m out on my own here. I think this concept itself is kind of dismissed outright a lot too, and I understand why, I wouldn’t believe me either actually. But, I do believe this is very much worth your time to check out, I am not aware of anything else very much like it. I won’t repeat what is already written on the github README here, but some info: I am a successful semi-retired solo game developer, I have been making my own bespoke game engines since…

    Feb 2026 · github.com

  22. 22

    Help us prove that listening to the audience - matters!

    Apr 2026

  23. 23IM

    Hey HN, I'm Aydin, a 13-year-old developer and indie maker looking to improve the world with my small startups. Recently, I built 2 micro SaaS projects. I spent days & weeks coding features, always telling myself that after coding one more feature I was for sure to get traction. This never happened. The reason: I never launched. With IndieReq, you can launch your startup fast and get real user feedback so you know exactly what features to ship and improve. All you have to do is sign up for free, create a feedback board, and share the public link with your users. It's that easy! If you've…

    2025 · indiereq.com

  24. 24AC

    Hello, This is something I've wanted to build for awhile (first bought the domain in 2020 (then lost it for a year+)). It's a tactics solver on each new tab page. There are 5 modes of play: Easy (<1200 elo) Medium (1200-1800) Hard (1800-2400) Expert (2400+) Speedrun (solve as many puzzles as possible in 60 seconds). I'm having a ton of fun with it, and definitely noticing improvements with actual games (definitely solved the most puzzles in my life while developing this extension). If you check it out, please let me know what you think. Any feedback is good!

    Apr 2026 · leetchess.com

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