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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I made a tactical map-based WWII submarine simulator (public beta)

I've seen quite a few simming discussions on HN, so thought some of you might like this - I've created a map-centered, tactical submarine simulator and it's been a blast to make. I grew up playing Silent Service II on Atari ST with my dad, then got into Silent Hunter IV in the 2000s, and most recently have been loving the more recent UBoat. In each case, the part I always enjoy the most is the plotting and charting aspect - essentially beating uncertain estimates with geometry. So I decided to see how far I could get making my own sim that focused nearly entirely on that aspect. You listen…

Silent Shark is a map-based tactical submarine simulator set in World War II. Players use hydrophone data, periscope observations, and a stadimeter to estimate enemy vessel positions and speeds, then calculate firing… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 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 →

  2. 2

    A submarine knife fight simulator by Carl Kolon.

    2025 · bearingsonly.net · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha. I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API. This…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    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 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hola HN! Long time lurker, sometimes commentor, first time poster here. I’ve been working alongside my two co-founders and a few colleagues on a project I’m excited (and a little nervous) to share with you all! Like many of us, I’ve lived a tortured existence with AI coding (is it vibes?) over the past few months - I think November was a big moment with this. But, one thing I’ve noticed after building orchestration layer after orchestration layer is that the thing I always came back to was “what the hell is Claude Code actually doing?” Perhaps it’s because of the time Claude Code got…

    Jun 2026 · backplanes.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

    Underwater multi-player mayhem.

    2015 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Shows all underwater cables and who owns them

    2016 · submarinecablemap.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    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 · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Extracted Maps of the DOS Game Test Drive 3. Contribute to s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps development by creating an account on GitHub.

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11IM

    I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…

    2022 · battle-of-flags.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    This is something that I've been working on on-and-off in my spare time for the last few years. I started in 2020 during Covid trying to do a Mount and Blade style map in UE4, and it grew from there until where it is now - I would just add a feature, then another, until it came together. Since the start of the year I've really been trying to polish it some more. I've got the full thing planned for a Q3 25 release. Github release if you don't have Steam: https://github.com/joe-gibbs/fall-of-an-empire-release

    2024 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Tactical naval sandbox action

    2015 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    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 →

  15. 15

    Building a 1D-Pong game is a bit of a rite of passage at the Chaos Communication Congress. I was inspired by a version I saw at 38C3 and built my own interpretation for 39C3. Lots of people enjoyed playing it and even Elliot Williams featured it in his 39C3 Hackaday Podcast. And I can attest: it's truly fun because it's sooo simple at first sight - but wait until the speed increases... Not a bad work to fun created ratio for such a little project. I used the opportunity to play around with Claude Code on my preexisting codebase to publish a nice-ish repo on GitHub. It worked great without…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Underwater Adventure

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Gundam style dungeon crawler

    2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Drift▲71

    The first bullet simulator for VR

    2015 · devpost.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    The world's first shark detection buoy

    2014 · its alternatives →

  20. 20TT

    Simulate anything on a map from a text prompt -- and conduct risk analysis against LiveUA map's global realtime data points from social media and news sources. I trained a GPT-2-size model on historical incident data used to predict things that will go wrong. As historian Benjamin Breen mentions, the leading language models are good historians, so the application will simulate historical events pretty well also. I include a Multi-Agent RL Urban Mobility model in progress displayed on the map as small white cubes representing traffic and pedestrians. Around SF, it uses real census data and…

    2025 · mused.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Sailing simulator

    2016 · marineverse.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A multiplayer stealth-deathmatch game

    2016 · chambaragame.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    A collection of code samples for the Uno Platform. Contribute to unoplatform/Uno.Samples development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey HN, I built depthviz, an open-source CLI tool that generates depth & time overlay videos from dive logs. It supports dive computers (Garmin, Suunto, Shearwater, Apnealizer) and manual input for freedivers who want to enhance their footage with real-time dive data. Why I Built It: Adding dive data to videos manually is tedious. depthviz automates this by reading dive logs (.fit, .csv, .xml) from various sources, generating an overlay video with real-time depth, allowing full customization (fonts, colors, depth smoothing, stroke width), and running on Windows, macOS, and Linux. How It…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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