AI · alternatives · 2026

This project wraps the classic Infocom Zork games with an LLM to accept natural language commands instead of the limited parser the original games understood. Players can type anything, and the LLM translates it into… Below are 23 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work▲915

   Built a ~9M param LLM from scratch to understand how they actually work. Vanilla transformer, 60K synthetic conversations, ~130 lines of PyTorch. Trains in 5 min on a free Colab T4. The fish thinks the meaning of life is food. Fork it and swap the personality for your own character.

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

2. 2HL
   How LLMs Work – Interactive visual guide based on Karpathy's lecture▲245

   All content is based on Andrej Karpathy's "Intro to Large Language Models" lecture (youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI). I downloaded the transcript and used Claude Code to generate the entire interactive site from it — single HTML file. I find it useful to revisit this content time to time.

   Apr 2026 · ynarwal.github.io · its alternatives →

3. 3
   LLM plays Pokémon (open sourced)▲186

   I built a bot that plays Pokémon FireRed. It can explore, battle, and respond to game events. Farthest I made it was Viridian Forest. I paused development a couple months ago, but given the launch of ClaudePlaysPokemon, decided to open source!

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4IG
   Interactive guide to Tetris in ClojureScript▲157

   2014 · shaunlebron.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan▲157

   I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available. There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.

   2025 · christopherdrum.github.io · its alternatives →

6. 6
   GameGame – an LLM to resolve conflicts in board games▲8

   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 →

7. 7TA
   Typocalypse – An Arcade Typing Roguelike▲5

   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 →

8. 8
   LLM Connected with REST APIs▲7

   Hey, folks here is a peek into Jujutsu. We at Poozle are working with hundreds of APIs and it has been always frustrating to 1. Search the API in the documentation or ask ChatGPT 2. Then copy it to the postman and understand/test the API 3. Generate code to integrate into the codebase We thought how about having all of this at one place. We currently fine-tuned LLM on public REST APIs to reduce hallucination and then combined it with ChatGPT and Postman. I look forward to feedback, feature requests and discussions!

   2023 · loom.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Aldren Quest – Browser RPG▲6

   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 →

10. 10
    Language1▲3

    Hi HN, I built Language1 (https://language1.app), a word game where you play "reverse Taboo" against an LLM. How it works: You are given a target word (e.g., "Apple") and a list of forbidden "taboo" words (e.g., "fruit", "red", "tree"). Your goal is to write a prompt that guides the LLM to output the exact target word, without using any of the forbidden words. The Benchmark Goal: I am developing this project with the plan of using the gameplay data to build a benchmark dataset. The goal is to test and evaluate LLM capabilities when processing unclear prompts, metaphors, analogies,…

    Jun 2026 · language1.app · its alternatives →

11. 11IM
    I made an interactive LLM Tools guide▲7

    So hard to keep up with tooling and MLOps - I put it all in one place and got some tips from an experienced friend on what to use.

    2025 · readyforagents.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Online RPG Game with AI being dungeon master▲6

    Hi I've created a text-based RPG game in which you can experience different adventures and play interesting characters while the AI acts as a real time DM/story teller. There are multiple ways to interact with AI: 1) Input free will move 2) Input default move (affects resources) 3) Post a question to DM Also one more cool feature is that you can create your own adventure via simple form. Add scenes, add characters and make it public so other players are able to test it. I also plan to have 'competetive' side where players will pay some small fee to creators in crypto depending on…

    2023 · landing.v3rpg.com · its alternatives →

13. 131W
    18 Words, Zanagrams and Sunflowers Are Now PZL Games▲8

    A few months ago I shared 18 Words, Zanagrams and Sunflowers here, which loads of you ended up playing and sending really useful feedback. I’ve now brought all three together into PZL games along with three new daily games. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone here who played, commented and helped improve them. HN has been a big part of getting these games off the ground. I'v now had over 1 million players across them. Would love to hear what you think of the new site, and any feedback is very welcome.

    Aug 2026 · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Story Generator▲5

    Hi everyone! Want to share something I'm working on. Here is the brief description: From a single text prompt, craft dynamic worlds (both fictional and real-life, of any kind) filled with interacting NPCs pursuing goals, and control (human-in-the-loop) their behaviour and world state in real-time. Text-to-image to visualise every single step of change in the world's and NPC's state. My main goal was to check if it's possible to use LLMs (GPT-4 currently) to make characters interact with each other but in the end, it ended up with a neat little app where users can interfere with NPC's (and…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15IM
    I made a game called Wheredle.xyz▲8

    Hey there HN, I took a page from Wordle's mechanisms and made this game for fun for some friends and I. Check out Wheredle and let me know what you think of it! ↙ ↗ ↘ https://wheredle.xyz

    2022 · wheredle.xyz · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Aiaiai.guide: Plain-English mental model for LLM apps, tools and agents▲7

    I’ve been building LLM tooling for a small VC fund and found myself explaining the same mental model over and over to non-technical people around me: how a stateless LLM becomes a chatbot, how tool use works, what an agent is mechanically, and why context windows shape all of it. I never found a guide that covered that full chain at the level I wanted, so I wrote one. It’s nine short chapters, each building on the last. Deliberately simplified: the goal is a useful mental model, not a textbook. Feedback, corrections, and contributions welcome: github.com/ymyke/aiaiai

    Apr 2026 · aiaiai.guide · its alternatives →

17. 17OS
    Open-Source AI Adventure Game▲7

    Hi HN! I'd love your feedback for this AI storytelling game. Remember when you used to read choose-your-own adventure books as a kid? We're trying to re-create that. The site lets you create adventures by seeding them with parameters that end up feeding LLMs: title, genre, writing style, etc. Once you've done that, you can play your book like a game: with custom chapters, illustrations, voice narration, choices, and dice rolls. We’re really into the idea of merging the open-ended generative AI with goal-directed story arcs that the game author can control. Everything is open source (links…

    2023 · ai-adventure.steamship.com · its alternatives →

18. 18IM
    I'm learning VIM and making a game out of it▲9

    So, I'm learning VIM and made this yesterday, I pretend to increment it as I learn new stuff. You move with HJKL and that's it for now. Don't let the sublimes consume you. http://worms.io/vimwarrior/

    2016 · its alternatives →

19. 19
    A Chrome extension that gives you chess tactics on new tab pages▲5

    Hello, This is something I've wanted to build for awhile (first bought the domain in 2020 (then lost it for a year+)). It's a tactics solver on each new tab page. There are 5 modes of play: Easy (<1200 elo) Medium (1200-1800) Hard (1800-2400) Expert (2400+) Speedrun (solve as many puzzles as possible in 60 seconds). I'm having a ton of fun with it, and definitely noticing improvements with actual games (definitely solved the most puzzles in my life while developing this extension). If you check it out, please let me know what you think. Any feedback is good!

    Apr 2026 · leetchess.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    I had Fable clone a game, it turned it into an arena combat AI trainer▲5

    I started off with a simple goal: port the game Soldat to Typescript. I ended up not only with the game, but with a full system to train AI bots to play my own game, building a neural net to train new bot AIs from tens of thousands of simulated matches with different strategies. It also runs live all the time on my website and has a news dashboard and you can replay any game exactly. It all was a very fun way to dig into Fable's capabilities. The bill if I had done this with API billing? Nearly $2000.

    Jun 2026 · soldat.bobbby.online · its alternatives →

21. 21GA
    Generate a political compass of characters from a story prompt▲5

    Hey HN — I've been working on creating small games with LLMs for the past year or two and found that one thing they have been bad at generally is creating story worlds — they tend to generate clusters of similar characters that aren't intrinsically linked to each other. I was thinking about this and remembered the semi-famous alien invasion political compass meme: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PoliticalCompassMemes&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ktyq... I really liked how that format enforces the need to fill out all parts of the alignment chart, giving you a rich diversity of characters.…

    2025 · loregrid.com · its alternatives →

22. 22LG
    LLM grammar explainer and flash card maker for Japanese▲5

    Goal was to make it easy to jump from textbook learning into immersion. I wanted to play video games in Japanese, and started by using LLMs and a notebook, but figured it would be easier to streamline it all in an app. - You input a sentence in Japanese (easier on mobile where you can handwrite kanji you don't know) - App translates the sentence, explains the grammar, and gives you a list of flash cards - You choose some flash cards to save for studying later - You input a question about the explanation for more information - App explains some more and gives you more flash cards - Repeat And…

    2024 · goginko.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    I made a collection of games for playing in a terminal▲5

    Hello HackerNews, I'm Kaamkiya, the author of this program. It's a collection of minimal games made for terminals, like 2048, Hangman, and even two player games like pong. They're all text-based, but they can actually be quite fun. If you want to test it right now, you can do this: go run github.com&#x2F;Kaamkiya&#x2F;gg@latest I started this project out of boredom, honestly. I was bored, and when I'm bored I like to code or play video games. So I coded video games. I kept them really minimal though, because I'm not great at gamedev and thought it would be easier to contribute to text-based…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

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