Alternatives
Products that do what I solo developed an action-roguelite and launched it today does
It's my first steam game, I'm very pleased with how it came out. It's the largest person project I've ever made. I'm happy to answer any questions.
- 1IG
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold…
2025
- 2BW
Hi HN ! This is an open source project I've been working on for a while. It's actually the third breakout-like game I've built. I really like the simplicity of the concept, having just one input (the puck horizontal position) and a simple gameplay that gives a low skill floor. My girlfriend and I played a lot of the excellent LBreakoutHD, an open source breakout game that follows the traditional formula of having multiple lives, scoring points by breaking bricks and catching the good upgrades that spawn randomly and fall down, while avoiding bad upgrades. She liked this game because it is…
2025 · breakout.lecaro.me
- 3TS
Hello everyone, I would like to see if there is any interest in this little project that I have been working on for the past few years. Could be relevant, seeing the direction in which the mainstream game engines are going. I didn't really like any of the already existing options, so I tried to make my own and it turned out to be easier than expected. It's sort of like a low-budget Unreal/Source, but with open-world streaming support and it is free and open source. Very old-school. But optimized for more modern hardware. Very fast too. Still not production ready, but it seems like it is…
2025 · racenis.github.io
- 4MA
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
- 5LG
2014 · lifegoesongame.com
- 6GD
2025 · reprobate.site
- 7MB
Hi, so i'm making a 2D game engine with its own IDE and interpreted programming language, all are written in C# It's open source, and I'm looking for contributors! The backend engine is MonoGame, the IDE is WinForms and the project is real, not just another AI-slop... Please check it out, i promise it's an unusual thing! Here's a YouTube video showing me using the engine for making a little cute game: https://youtu.be/h_AnUg4yJWs?si=MR3nQCVvOMDP3iqg Any feedback is welcome!
May 2026 · github.com
- 8SF
Hi HN! I’ve been building a 2D game using a custom engine I wrote from scratch – no Unity, no frameworks. It’s fully self-funded and will be released commercially on Steam. Engine source code (MIT): http://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo I’d love feedback on the gameplay, visuals, performance, or anything else. Thanks!
2025 · bereprobate.com
- 91M
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
- 10IL
I am a 50-year-old who left a FAANG Engineering Manager job to build a sci-fi game. I just released Outsider, a sci-fi narrative game with multiple endings. If you want to support my work, the game is now 15% off (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/). I've always wanted to create a game. I moved from Brazil to the US to work at Big Tech, but after a career of customer focus, mission alignment and 360-degree feedback, I wanted to experience solo game development. While FAANG can be soul-crushing at times, I had a great manager and an amazing team. The pay and…
Nov 2025
- 11IM
Thank you https://opengameart.org for your service. People like me who can't draw or compose music are in your debt. The game, "Glitch and Rush" has been made in a few hours here and there. I've been tinkering in GameDev for years, if not decades, but I never released anything. The goal here was simple: - come up with a core mechanic - implement a single level - add some polishing - RELEASE I hope you'll enjoy it. BTW, my best time is 2min23s (yes, I'm bad at my own game, it's ok, I'm ok).
2022 · linkdd.itch.io
- 12IB
Dear Hacker News, I'm kindly asking for your participation in the open beta for my AI-managed mini-games website. Thank you in advance! For a limited time window, I'm setting the all-free feature flag to true. I hope you have a lot of fun exploring the AI's sense for games! Here and there, I tweaked it to help with visual consistency. I would be deeply grateful if you opted into analytics. $2,300 in API tokens... Cheers!
Jun 2026 · minigames.world
- 13JR
2013 · craftstud.io
- 14AN
Most games have limits. You can only use preset features, need coding for customization & adding mods, require expensive extra devices. We wanted to remove those barriers. That’s why we are building space zero—a browser based 3D world powered by AI. We plan to build players can freely mix items to generate unexpected creations with unique properties and sounds. Also the world itself is dynamically generated, evolving endlessly. I uploaded a demo version I’ve been working on for the past month! I hope to get any feedbacks or comments :)
2025 · 0.space
- 15ST
2020 · danbolt.itch.io
- 161P
A little over a week ago, I was wondering if anyone would care about the thing I’d just built. Let me rewind a bit. I’m a solo indie maker, just like a lot of you. I’ve built so many projects, put in the work, and then… nothing. A few months ago, I launched something I was genuinely proud of on one of the big platforms. I was excited, hopeful. But within hours, it got buried under a pile of other launches. No one saw it. No one cared. That sucked. Not because I expected it to blow up overnight, but because it felt like I never even had a shot. And I kept thinking about how many other indie…
2025
- 17IM
http://codewords.io/ I've been trying to get permission to run a game of it from the publisher and designer (CGE & Vlaada Chvátil) but I haven't heard back. I've found demonstrating that there's interest in what you're doing is the best way to get ahold of people. So.. Anyone interested in trying a massive game of Codenames over Twitch? Not quite "For Science!" more "For Engineering!" Which, let's be honest here, has a much better ring to it. If you'd like to know more, I put up an FAQ up here: http://codewords.io/faq/ If you'd like to sign up to help,…
2017
- 18IB
I'm working on the Survival Crafting RPG that you would have played on your Apple II back in the '80s. You can think of it as Valheim's gameplay crammed into the tile-based UI of the old Ultima games. It has a procedurally-generated open world with towns and NPCs to talk to, all the resource gathering, mining, crafting stuff you'd expect in a modern survival game, and some good old fashioned dungeon crawling to boot. I've been working on it off and on for the last several months. It's complete up through the Bronze Age (in Valheim terms). Let me know what you think!…
May 2026
- 19AM
Hi everyone! I'm one of the developers behind this project. I wrote it with my two brothers, Daniel and Ricardo. For years the three of us have been curious about how multiplayer games work, which is why we decided to work on this project. Our goal was to gain a deep understanding of how different players can share the same 3D space, which is why we wrote our own tiny game engine instead of using something like Unity. We wrote the engine using C++ and OpenGL, and we then compiled it to WebAssembly using Emscripten so that it would run effortlessly on web browsers. We are really excited about…
2022 · play.moonlightmuseum.io
- 20CI
2012 · clay.io
- 21AR
A minimal "@ moving around a hardcoded map" implemented in a bunch of languages, some by me and some contributed by others. A slightly more interesting riff on the Hello World or 99 Bottles of Beer theme. More languages or improvements on existing ones would be nice :) There's a github repo at: https://github.com/nrkn/SimpleRL
2011
- 22SE
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
- 23AS
Hi HN! This is my first game — something I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a small browser game built with Phaser 3, React, and the phaser template (https://github.com/phaserjs/template-react-ts/). I made it in 2 days (like 8 hours in total real time) using gemini-cli. About 90% of the code was generated with AI, but I learned a lot by making fine tweaks. It only works on PC since it’s a typical WASD + R (reload) shooter. I’d love feedback on: - Gameplay (is it fun, too hard?) - Ideas for new features Thanks in advance! ps: I used cubes as a prototype, but now I kind of…
2025 · cubic-zombies.pages.dev
- 24BX
iny team (3 devs, 1 artist) here—sharing our first game: BALL x PIT, a survival roguelite focused on physics-based ball combat. Key bits: Unique ball types (Bomb, Black Hole, etc.) with distinct bounce/effects 42 evolutions via clear fusion (no random unlocks) Base-building for permanent run perks Launched 5 days: 300k+ sales, 95% Steam positive. On PC/PS5/Xbox (Game Pass free)/Switch ($14.99). Happy to answer questions, and we’re prepping an update with more fusions. Thanks for checking!
Oct 2025 · ballxpit.net
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