Alternatives
Products that do what LunarBasic, a BASIC that compiles 2D games to native executables does
I built LunarBasic because I wanted a modern recreation of BlitzBasic from back in the day. I wanted it to have good step debugging features, and I wanted it to compile down to a native binary with no external dependencies. I do know there's an open source BlitzBasic out there but I wanted something simpler and more concise. It does have a "pro" feature set, but for the foreseeable future, anyone joining up will have the pro version in perpetuity (eg I'm not trying to sell anything here). It's early (v0.8.0). Would love feedback on the language design and compiler output, especially from…
- 1

- 2IS
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
- 3PA
GitHub: https://github.com/mayuropensource/PuffinBASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a general-purpose high-level language from the 1960s. PuffinBASIC is an implementation of the BASIC language specification. PuffinBASIC conforms most closely to GWBASIC. The purpose of this implementation is to learn how to write interpreters and resurrect an old programming language to work in modern ecosystem. The interpreter is evolving fast and in near future, I wish to apply modern interpreter building techniques to it. How it works? 1. PuffinBASIC's…
2020
- 4IV
Hi everyone, When the pandemic started, I put QuickBASIC in front of my kids and could see them enjoy toying with writing some simple programs. Since then, I've been working on a side project to build a similar experience using modern technologies, with the goal of having a tool to teach the foundations of programming to (my own) kids. This is what EndBASIC is: is a retro-looking, BASIC interpreter with DOS-like features -- built for the web. The environment is designed to be minimalist in an attempt to reproduce the computing experience of the 1980s where the computers were simpler to…
2021
- 5GA
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
- 6LA
LunaRoute is a high-performance local proxy for AI coding assistants like Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, and OpenCode. Get complete visibility into every LLM interaction with zero-overhead passthrough, comprehensive session recording, and powerful debugging capabilities. - See Everything Your AI Does - get full logs (JSONL), summary of sessions including tokens used (input/output) as well as tools usage and success rates. - Privacy & Compliance Built-In - redact or tokenize any sensitive information (regex based). - Speaks OpenAI and Anthropic dialects so you can route (and translate)…
Oct 2025 · github.com
- 7IM
Hi HN, I’m one of the devs behind StarDesk, a P2P-first remote desktop we’ve been building for ~1 year. We started this partly out of frustration: some popular RDP tools haven’t seen meaningful updates in a long time, and long-standing issues are often left unaddressed. As devs, we really dislike software that stagnates once it “works well enough”. StarDesk is our attempt to do it differently. What we focus on: -P2P by default (relay as fallback) -Low RTT + low jitter > chasing max bitrate -Encoder / input path tuned for real-time interaction -Modern E2EE (TLS/DTLS) UX-wise, setup…
Jan 2026 · stardesk.net
- 8E
Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
2024 · excalihub.dev
- 9SD
Hey HN, I wanted to share with you what I've been working on for the past few months – the Splunk Developer Platform[1]. We released our Python SDK[2] back in August, but just last week we released our Java[3] and JavaScript[4] ones, and the JS SDK was the one I've been working on. It was a great learning experience for me – first real foray into JavaScript and Node (the SDK works in both the browser and Node), and was a lot of fun to try different things out releasing it. I ended up building on a couple of open source libraries (and contributing back). We are building out Splunk's developer…
2011
- 10YA
I must say I was encouraged to post my project here when I saw the positive response to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780731 Before you make any comments, please keep in mind that the project is written for fun. I'm not forcing anyone to use it. In fact, nobody should use the current unstable version in a serious project. Here is the link: http://github.com/bsg/libserv Please share your thoughts. All criticisms are welcome, even the harsh ones. p.s. The project is still a work-in-progress.
2012
- 11MA
This weekend I built a multi-agent coding system which, quite unexpectedly, beat Claude Code on Stanford's Terminal Bench! The architecture is straightforward, consisting of an orchestrator agent that deploys explorer & coder subagents to complete complex terminal based tasks, utilising an intelligent context sharing mechanism along the way which makes it all work. The repo has a lot of technical details, and all the code and prompts for you to play around with if you'd like! I had a lot of fun making this, I hope you have fun reading the README, using it yourself, or even extending it! As…
2025 · github.com
- 12OS
Hi HN! So this all started out as an experiment. I wanted to test the Golang gomobile library to build a small app on Android in Go. And it turned out to be a game, and harder than I thought... After a lot of work and many gotchas (and a lot of moments where I was about to give up and started to squint on Unity) I finally manage to create a working game for Android with Go. The game is quite simple and if it wasn't for being written in OpenGL/OpenAL from scratch it would be quite simple to make it in Unity or any other game engine for that matter. Another goal of my project was actually…
2022
- 13IM
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/Kaamkiya/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
- 14MF
I know everyone is a bit burned out on blockchain and cryptocurrency related stuff around these parts, but I've been working on as a side project for the last few months and thought you guys might be interested: https://cryptoempire.io/ It's still a bit buggy and incomplete (the mobile ux needs a lot of work, the leaderboard isn't functional yet, etc.), but I've reached a point where I'm not totally ashamed of sharing it :) Any feedback would be most welcome!
2018
- 15IB
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
- 16FI
Hi all! I built FlipJump, a programming language with just 1 opcode, yet capable of any computation. It started with thinking of the idea of the minimalistic language, but it's more than that - I had to set up the whole environment for it: I have written a macro-assembler, an interpreter for the binary, and a very extensive standard library. I also written about ~30 programs in it. Also, the standard library is tested. I also wrote an esolangs page: https://esolangs.org/wiki/FlipJump Tell me what you think!
2023 · github.com
- 17EA
I'm excited to share a project that I've been working on mostly solo for the past year! It's called Elara, and it's a free open source game that teaches you how to code. You can play directly in your browser without downloading anything or creating an account. It's targeted toward complete beginners, but if you already have some coding experience, there are optional bonus challenges to really test your knowledge and problem-solving skills. If you like code golf, some of the challenges will be right up your alley ;) Under the hood, the backend/core game logic is built with Rust and…
2023 · elaragame.com
- 18IM
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
- 19IB
I’ve spent the last 2.5 months building a product that runs LLM-powered code reviews on my pull requests — and I just launched it. The tool is built specifically for solo developers. You install it on your repo, trigger a scan by creating a pull request, and it leaves structured review comments using OpenAI under the hood. Funnily enough, I used the dev version of this app to review its own pull requests while building it. It helped me spot bugs, simplify structure, and keep quality high — all with minimal need for another human in the loop. Things I want to try out in the next months : -…
2025 · codii.dev
- 20LA
Hello HN, I am building a devtool to understand existing codebases. The idea originates from my time at big tech as well as various attempts to get involved in open source projects. When I was in college I wanted to improve my coding skills by contributing to opensource projects. I would pickup a bug or feature request but I always found myself stuck at the very first step. I did not understood where and how to begin contributing. I once submitted a patch in firefox which was labeled "Good first issue" but that was still very handheld. The assigner told me exactly which files I need to…
2024 · lucidcode.ai
- 21MB
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
- 22PC
Built this with my roommate over the weekend. At the end of the game, GPT will share its reasoning for each choice, which yields some funny results and explains why its so hard to win. Enjoy!
2023 · codenames-with-gpt.netlify.app
- 23TA
https://github.com/PlumeCat/tack Hi HN! Tack is a scripting language I've been working on sporadically for the past year or so, and intensely for the past few weeks. It originated out of a desire for something that was like Lua, but with a more familiar syntax, and without some of the other surprises in Lua such as the 1-indexed tables. It's also been a great learning project, and a very satisfying challenge! While the current version is early beta at best, I hope to continue working on it and maybe see some adoption. Despite the relative lack of optimization, I'm very…
2023 · github.com
- 24NT
I built a CLI tool that turns codebases and PRs into diagrams so you can quickly understand how things fit together. Originally made it because I couldn't follow my own AI-generated repos. Just shipped a big update: - Switched from D2 to Mermaid for rendering - Tree-sitter AST parsing + agentic flow instead of raw LLM calls. ~50x faster. - Works on any GitHub repo or PR, not just local - Dropped the web frontend, it's just a CLI now - Published as a pip package Still a ton to improve and I'm building fast. Feedback, issues, PRs all welcome.
Feb 2026 · github.com
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →