Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I spent 6 years making a cool free game
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?-…
BoxByte Lyte is a free 3D arcade game designed for hardcore players that combines color-matching mechanics with simple one-button controls. The game uses an innovative color-matching system as its core mechanic and is… 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 spent 6 years making a cool free game launched in 2015; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
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.
2022 · rotaboxes.com · its alternatives →
- 2MA
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 →
- 3
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- 5
An RPG with random generated elements.
2015 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 6
A charming pixel art platform adventure, reminiscent of the good old 16-bit days. Served as the foundation for the retro-platformer Tiny Thor.
2023 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →
- 7
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 · its alternatives →
- 8IB
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 →
- 9
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 →
- 10
Hi HN, I'm Oliver. I've been in the software and cloud engineering industry for a long time (28 years), and this past year genuinely changed how I think about coding. The bottleneck isn’t syntax anymore. It’s clarity. I now spend more time describing what I want, testing results, and refining instructions than writing code line by line. The spark for this project came from a presentation I gave at my son’s school in December, 2025. I expected mild interest. Instead, kids were completely engaged — hands up, pitching game ideas, iterating in real time. That made me question something I’d…
Jan 2026 · pixelarcade.studio · its alternatives →
- 11IM
Hi everyone, Wanted to share a game I built. It's called Unscramble! and I believe it's the simplest word building game. Rules: You get a few letters on screen. You need to make one word with all the letters. Tap a letter to select. Tap again to deselect. Faster you go, better you score. If you enter anagrams of the word it's looking for, it gives you extra points. If you are stuck, you can either "Ask Friend" or get Hint. You get extra points for getting the word fast but you don't get penalized for taking too long. I believe the simplicity of the game along with big touch buttons makes it…
Sep 2026 · its alternatives →
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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 · its alternatives →
- 13
Hello HN! After I got a great response on my first game, I wanted to share the second game I ever made. It's an infinite jumping game, but there are bombs to watch out for! It can be played both on desktop and mobile. It can be installed as a PWA too. If you enjoyed, please leave a star on the GitHub repository: https://github.com/shajidhasan/dotventure Thanks for taking a look. Years ago, whenever I wanted to build games, I'd always stop because I felt I needed to create original game assets but could never get it done. After making this game, I've realized that you…
2024 · dotventure.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 14AS
Proud to share the very first release of my new game: Alverde - It's for my 4yo - Currently works only on desktop browsers - As long as I keep having fun building it, it will keep evolving Game: https://alverde.netlify.app/ Source: https://github.com/trumbitta/playroom Plans: https://github.com/trumbitta/playroom/discussions/20
2022 · its alternatives →
- 158B
I had a lot of fun with this one. She's used it several times, and I watch, to see what subtle bugs or ux issues there may be. And when she gets on the bus I fix them quickly before work. It's been a fun game to create where it gives here immediate feedback and she's willing to study more. Her test is this Friday. fingers crossed that it helped her!
2025 · kbr.sh · its alternatives →
- 16WB
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 →
- 17
Chroma▲3Fast-paced arcade fun, with awesome electronic music!
2019 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 18MN
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 →
- 19
My kids are surprisingly keen to learn to type, and I couldn't find any thing out there which was A) Free without adverts B) Worked well on mobile/tablets C) Was clutter free and easy to use I wondered how easily I could vibe code a solution. Here's the result. Everything here was "vibe coded" to an extent, the graphics, sounds, art-work, even the github pipelines ( and I used chatgpt to instruct me how to configure everything in AWS ) I'm particularly pleased with the phoneme game, https://free-kids-typing-games.com/games/phoneme-sound-lab/ which was crafted…
Dec 2025 · free-kids-typing-games.com · its alternatives →
- 20MW
Happy Halloween! Instead of going to a Halloween party this year, my wife and I decided to run a tiny Hackathon and built this little retro choose-your-own-adventure to pay tribute to a popular series of yesteryear. Try and escape! Also pumpkin mode!! We made liberal use of ChatGPT for code, DALLE3/Midjourney for images, but did most of the storyboarding/writing ourselves because we couldn't stand the style of GPT4/Claude.
2023 · tremella.github.io · its alternatives →
- 21TA
I created a small typing game. Would love to get some feedback on it. What can I improve? Are there any features you're missing? Are you having fun playing it? I certainly did have fun :)
Jul 2026 · typocalypse.florianrudaj.com · its alternatives →
- 22
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 · its alternatives →
- 23
Want to Play I Can Transform? 🕹️ On GamePix You Can Play I Can Transform for Free. Start Playing Now!
2025 · gamepix.com · its alternatives →
- 24
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 · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →