Alternatives
Products that do what I lost my job and started working on a sci-fi adventure game does
After losing my job, I decided to channel my energy into creating my own sci-fi adventure game. While I’ve previously released a VR game, I’ve been working as a regular software developer for the past few years. The game, Star Mission: Remote Sectors, is a first-person exploration and survival experience set on an uncharted alien planet. Players use superhuman abilities like telekinesis to uncover anomalies, navigate environmental hazards, and survive in hostile conditions. A big inspiration for the game was classic sci-fi movies and the optimistic vision of Star Trek. The journey has been…
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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
- 2IC
I built a desktop Mars colony survival game called Underhill, in homage to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Land on Mars, build solar panels and greenhouses, and try not to pass out during dust storms. Eventually your colonists split into factions: Greens who want to terraform and Reds who want to preserve Mars. There’s Chill Mode for players that just want to build & hang, and Conflict Mode that introduces the Red v. Green factions. Reds sabotage, the terrain slowly turns green as the world gets more terraformed. Feedback welcome, especially on performance and gameplay!
Feb 2026 · underhillgame.com
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2020 · dustycloud.org
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Rebels in the sky is a P2P multiplayer game about crews of space pirates roaming the galaxy to play basketball against each other. It's basically a basketball managerial game with some pirate-y stuff. It's a P2P game with no central server, built on top of libp2p. Players interaction are limited to playing games against each other and trading pirates. The game runs as a terminal application, meaning that you just need to run it from your terminal. You can try the game over ssh without installing: `ssh frittura.org -p 3788` My server is not very powerful and there is a limit to the number of…
2024 · github.com
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I built this with Claude cause I always wanted to tinker with a simulation economoy and I love space themes. A space-economy sim where nothing is scripted. A few hundred autonomous ships each run their own planner. Some chase the best trade route, take a delivery contract, refuel, retrofit at a shipyard, or dock so the crew can rest before morale tanks. Markets price everything off supply with shortage-urgency multipliers, factions tax and subsidize, populations migrate when they're unhappy, and stations that go broke get abandoned and rot. It started as an Elixir/Phoenix prototype, but…
Jul 2026 · github.com
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I got pretty good at (and very addicted to) the lunar lander game from a few days ago... so I decided to make an autopilot for the lander based on what I felt like was the best strategy! Now I can have perfect landings every time without lifting a finger :D Writing the autopilot code was a lot more fun than I expected! It felt a bit like programming a robot. Source code: https://github.com/szhu/lunar-lander-autopilot Original lander HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35032506
2023 · szhu.github.io
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http://www.terraexgame.com Terra Ex will be a 4x ("explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate") multiplayer online browser based game. Our Kickstarter will begin Oct. 16th (link to KS preview is on our site). We are making this game, in part, to fund STEM education. Details are on our site. About the game (from the site): "Our story begins eons from now, when Earth collides with Mars. Humanity must face an uncertain future: we must forge new civilizations in the far corners of space. Your ships are small at first, but opportunity is endless. Will you become a merchant society or…
2013
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I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit. Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objects I've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser. I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working…
Dec 2025 · luna.watermelonson.com
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It's free to play on steam, but you'll need a computer with a dedicated graphics card. I just released a new version after first releasing it 18 months ago. It's been a hard slog to scrounge time as it's not my day job but that's life. There's a ton of obvious improvements in the future (weather systems, temperature, varying rainfall, ice/snow, more biomes, more plate tectonics, lava, etc) but all suggestions/feedback is welcome.
2023 · store.steampowered.com
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Jul 2026 · github.com
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Hi HN! I'm working on an open-world multiplayer space sim with submarine-warfare-inspired combat. Crew a ship, haul cargo, run heists, hunt your foes with passive and active sensors. Browser-based, free, no install. Some of its features: - Submarine-style passive sensors. Contacts start as a bearing line (direction, no distance), resolve into an uncertainty circle, then into a full track. You triangulate over time by moving. - Silent running. Cut your emissions and witnesses can't ID you. - Newtonian flight. No drag, no auto-brake. Flip 180° and burn to stop. - Boarding combat. Dock with…
Apr 2026 · everestdrive.io
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My cousin and I love the Terraforming Mars board game. But we'd often get overly excited and knock our pieces off of our boards, losing track of our progress. So I digitised it. It comes with a few cool features like resource conversions (e.g. converting plants to greenery), production phase, offline, mobile-friendly and keeps track of the history using the browser history itself. Sharing this here in case there are any other TM fans that could also find some use in this :)
2024 · terraforming-mars-player-board.netlify.app
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It all started as an experiment to see if I could build a game making heavy use of Deno and its SQLite driver. After sharing an early build in the „What are you working on?“ thread here, I got the encouragement I needed to polish it and make a version 1.0 for Steam. So here it is, Microlandia, a SimCity Classic-inspired game with parameters from real-life datasets, statistics and research. It also introduces aspects that are conveniently hidden in other games (like homelessness), and my plan is to continue updating, expanding and perfecting the models for an indefinite amount of time.
Dec 2025 · microlandia.city
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2016 · github.com
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Command a starship on a desperate mission through unexplored sectors.
2024 · sheep.horse
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Did this a few years ago. Seems apropos. Sources and more here: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Mooncraft2000
Apr 2026 · mooncraft2000.com
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I am a big Dragon Age fan and sunk hundreds of hours into Inquisition. It had this minigame called astrariums where you had to solve these shapes based on constellation guides by tracing stars. I'm a hobby game dev and wondered if I could procedurally generate these puzzles so they were always solvable. Turns out you can, so I built a space puzzle game around it with a colorful aesthetic. I released it in web form here but I'm currently working on getting it on Steam and mobile.
Jun 2026 · starglyphs.com
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