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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I made a pretty relaxing puzzle game

I had the concept in my head for some time and firstly just prototyped it using only HTML & CSS. Sent it to a few friends and they liked it so I made it into its own website and added few 'competitive' features like click counter and share button.

Rotaboxes is a free daily puzzle game where players solve photo-based challenges. The game features a relaxing gameplay experience with competitive elements including a click counter and share functionality. It was… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. I made a pretty relaxing puzzle game launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1TY

    Hi all, hope someone enjoys (or not) my weekend project. See how many matching pairs you can find in two minutes. This is written in C++ and built to WebAssembly with Emscripten. The code is at https://github.com/0xf00ff00f/rotator

    2022 · 0xf00ff00f.github.io · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hi, I wanted to share a simple game I wrote. It's a sliding pieces puzzle like many others. I have focused a lot on making the experience smooth and minimalistic and the levels being challenging in a way a sudoku or chess puzzles could be. I had no prior knowledge of game development and while it feels like someone competent could build this game in a week I spent over two years and hundreds of hours to bring this game to life. My journey went through: - thinking it will be a PC game - being overwhelmed by the amount of different game frameworks - hiring an indie dev to bootstrap the game in…

    2023 · kuboble.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3IS

    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 · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Relaxing daily image puzzle game

    2022 · rotaboxes.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go. If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)

    2025 · abstractboardgames.com · its alternatives →

  6. 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 →

  7. 7
    Splice▲60

    An experimental and artistic puzzler

    2015 · cipherprime.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8IM

    A while ago I discovered three.js, a JavaScript library to manipulate 3D objects. It looked really interesting, but I had no real need for it... To change that I recently challenged myself to make one 3D web game per month with three.js. And I just release game #2, a puzzle game called Cuboid, and you can try it here: https://www.thomasfriday.com/cuboid/ Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Thanks!

    2023 · thomasfriday.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Swapple - A daily puzzle game where you transform patterns by swapping rows and columns. Challenge yourself to solve it in as few moves as possible!

    2025 · swapple.fuglede.dk · its alternatives →

  10. 10WH

    As a fan of dense New York Times-style crosswords, I challenged myself to create topic-specific puzzles. It turns out that generating crosswords and efficiently placing words is a non-trivial computational problem. I started the project, "Joystick Jargon" combining traditional crossword elements with gaming-related vocabulary. Here's the technical process behind it: 1. Data Source: Used a 3.8 Million Rows Reddit dataset from Hugging Face (https://huggingface.co/datasets/webis/tldr-17). 2. Data Filtering: Narrowed down to gaming-related subreddits (r/gaming,…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Very simple yet engaging puzzle game

    2016 · its alternatives →

  12. 12IB

    It's like a mix between Picross (Nonograms) and Polyominoes. It's a minimalist puzzler which has no text, no tutorials (none required) and no ads set in a relaxing environment. App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/shapeuku-shape-puzzle-game/i... Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dtbgames.s... I have a bulk load of Android promo codes to give away, so if you'd like one let me know! (Sorry iOS users, I have no free codes left!)

    2018 · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    I've been playing with this for quite some time and I think it's finally ready for public consumption. All feedback welcome.

    2025 · madmonk13.github.io · its alternatives →

  14. 14MF
  15. 15

    Puzzle game reimagined with a unique swipe-base mechanics.

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hello guys, I'm glad to present to you PlayAlgoShip, a web-based game where you solve fun algorithmic puzzles. The rules are simple, you need to find the correct algorithm that makes the ship collect all stars. If you succeed, you will unlock the next level! There are also live statistics like how many players are currently playing on your current level (you are not alone struggling!), the finish rate of the level, and how many players liked/disliked it. It's 100% free, I hope you will enjoy the experience!

    2024 · playalgoship.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17MN

    This is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a long time, and I decided to finally code it up. In the same way that Scrabble decomposes words into letters, what if there was a game that decomposed letters into sub-shapes? There’s a lot of directions this could go, and I’m still exploring the possibility space. Enjoy. Suggestions welcome. It doesn’t have a real name yet.

    2024 · shovemedia.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    New block puzzle game with popular yet unique gameplay.

    2025 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  19. 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. 20WB

    Hi HN, I love building small games (as Pong, Wordle, Tetris, etc.), but they're never quite unique enough to justify their own site. So I built boring.game - a daily "boring" game where the social mechanics (predicting your score, challenging other users) is more interesting than the game itself. I started a HN team if you want to compare your results: https://boring.game/invite/SRhyUStjin You can also play all daily games without signing up, if that is what you prefer. Built with SvelteKit (first time using Svelte - loved it!). Would love feedback on both the concept and…

    2025 · boring.game · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Made this game for ReactRIOT, and people loving it 😌

    2017 · reactriot-crossword.herokuapp.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22PM

    A "marbles-based" puzzle game, feels a little bit like pool, and a little bit like breakout, but it has its own flavor. Three worlds of linear gameplay in single-player mode, with a total of 36 levels, which the player can solve either by a few quick trick shots, or with a patient step-by-step approach. Shared screen mode to play against a friend. Our first title, feedback appreciated. This is the "lite" version, completely free, no ads. The full version has 5 worlds and 200+ levels. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apsisware.pinchoomarbleslite

    2014 · its alternatives →

  23. 23AC

    15 puzzles for the masochistic CSS fiend.

    2025 · csshell.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24PS

    Hi HN! I'm excited to share SOLHOPPER, a minimalist game I'm building in just ~500 lines of HTML/CSS/JS. Here's a breakdown of the development process and some fun quirks of the game: Challenges and Fun Facts: - World Building & Math: Crafting the initial world and refining the game mechanics to keep it simple and compact was the toughest part. The back story is that you play as a Solhopper captain traveling away from earth at 10% the speed of light to capture solar flairs which unlock endowments (bottom left) to develop that star system. These endowments were setup by benefactors…

    2024 · solhopper.com · its alternatives →

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