Growth · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to our Co-op onboarding project
Hi Hacker News! My Co Co-op Matt and I are on a work term and were given the task of building a webapp that could make $20 in four weeks as our onboarding challenge. We're in the final stretch here and would sure appreciate HN's thoughts (we realize we kind of did this backwards, building something first before talking to people who might use it, but hey! We're leaning.). So basically, we tried to apply game dynamics to retaining visitors to websites by offering a reward (ie. discount coupon / premium content, etc.) for meeting various 'objectives' (ie. pages to visit). We call it ScavSite…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. our Co-op onboarding project launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 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 →
- 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
1 month in, and launching The Side Project Accelerator
2016 · hackingui.com · its alternatives →
- 4
TLDR: I made a community where you can find builders or product owners to collab on sideprojects together with <3 A year ago i completed my first sideproject, a digital course on how to "cold email a chief information security officer". I thought and think its a great course, but of course I fell into all the traps (didnt verify a need, i thought id make it and everyone would buy automatically), i tested google ads but hated nerding on that, so i decided to find a marketing person to partner up with! But i knew no one! That got me thinking how many people with relevant knowledge that isnt…
2025 · relentlessly.no · its alternatives →
- 5WM
Hi Hacker News! My friend and I [1] would like to share with you something we did this week-end. We really like the idea of game jams like the Ludum Dare, and we’d like to participate, but it’s often complicated for us, as we are often limited by the rules inherent to this kind of competition: we have to be available at specific dates, and the rules doesn’t always work for us. For example: if you want to participate as a team in a Ludum Dare compo, you have 72h instead of 48h, and you are not required to publish your code. We realized that what we really like is: - To work together. - The…
2014 · its alternatives →
- 6
Hi everyone, I just saw a vibe coded game on HN, and thought maybe I should post about this here. I'm organizing a vibe coding game dev competition called Vibe Jam. Last year we did it too and there was 1000+ games submitted. This year the deadline is May 1 and you can submit your games until then. There's $35,000 in prizes with the Gold prize being $20,000. Let me know what you think! -Pieter
Apr 2026 · vibej.am · its alternatives →
- 7
hey all, happy to share research i've been working on for islo.dev in recent months. ever since the cheating agents (https://debugml.github.io/cheating-agents/) paper came out, revealing reward hacking was 4x more prevalent than previously estimated, i've been looking into how we can deal with the issue the common approach (taken by the tbench team) is post hoc trajectory analysis. i've been interested in the idea of reframing the problem as an endpoint security problem and tackling it via sandbox i hope you find it interesting, and thanks to the islo.dev team for…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Hey everyone, I wanted to see if I could build something like DataFa.st myself, so I made MochiAnalytics. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. It’s got all the bells and whistles a small team or solo founder would need to track campaigns and to see which channel is driving revenue. It’s a cheaper analytics tool for side projects, indie hackers, and small apps. I honestly wish I could make it free, but it still needs servers, a database, and a backend to keep event ingestion running 24/7, so there are real costs behind it. I’m still working on it and will keep adding more features…
Jul 2026 · mochianalytics.com · its alternatives →
- 9IC
Stack: WASM + Rust + Macroquad I saw that a company had posted a cool job ad where you had to apply directly via a REST API. That gave me the idea to gamify my resume as well. Since I was bored, I vibe coded a bit and voilà, the result was ready. I think it's something new and fun that might put a smile on people's faces. (Please don't spam my email address, but feel free to send me an email with your high score if you want!)
Feb 2026 · breezko.dev · its alternatives →
- 10HP
Hey everyone, I've been experimenting with collaborative learning and active learning for a while (I launched Coderoulette a couple of months ago) and I'm launching something new today that I'm really excited about. Online learning is pretty passive (video lectures) and lonely, and I think we could create an online learning experience much engaging and effective than that. Only 5% of people who start a Coursera course finish it. My hypothesis is that we can increase that number significantly by matching learners online in teams of 2-3 and giving them a real project to build together. On top…
2016 · its alternatives →
- 11IV
Hey my name is Ivo and I'm a developer and a startup entusiast. My girlfriend was out of the coutry for the weekend and I decided to do something cool like building a startup. I've done a few startups over the years but that's the first I actually released, I would love to hear your feedback on it.
2024 · craftlynow.com · its alternatives →
- 12
This weekend I participated in my first hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt, and built an HTML5 game with a few people that I met at the event. We got honorable mention, putting us in the top 6 teams of 104 competing. I'm looking for some feedback on the game, so here it is: http://venturecrapital.us Source: https://github.com/wylieconlon/Venture-Crapital https://github.com/dmitric/venturecrapital-server
2011 · venturecrapital.us · its alternatives →
- 13HA
Hello HN! Here's my November Startup Sprint project (coded in two days). http://hackerlunch.com It allows you to post your lunch plans and lets other hackers join you. I built this because I often see HN users are interested in meeting each other if they are in the same area. I am not a coder, so this version is very rough. If people use it, I will work with others to build a more polished version. I would love some feedback. What do you think? Is this something you will be using?
2010 · hackerlunch.com · its alternatives →
- 14IM
I'm documenting everything about my process. From learning to code, to building the app, and all the way to my outreach efforts. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with everyone who's not a programer, and is daunted to build a software on their own. Trust me. If I can do it, anyone can! You can find my updates on: https://Claritask.com ...as well as video updates on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmqmifW4kIcPclXigay1dQ Would love to hear your feedback on my progress and if you have any suggestions on what I can do better. There's so many task managers out…
2017 · its alternatives →
- 15SS
hey hey! I'm the co-founder of squads -- a product that makes it easy to see what your friends and top investors are doing in web3. This product was developed out my own frustration trying to get more involved in web3. One of the greatest challenges in the crypto space is figuring out where to start. For some of us, we're lucky to have a friend who can serve as a guide, and we wanted to build a product that would make introducing your friends to crypto a more inviting experience. There is so much alpha and information living on Twitter + Discord, but the problem is finding the signal from…
2022 · beta.squads.xyz · its alternatives →
- 16IL
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 · its alternatives →
- 17
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 · its alternatives →
- 18OC
Hey everyone! I built a little side project called OpenQuest over the last three weeks, and I'm looking for some feedback to see if it's worth taking further. The idea is simple: it's a place to create a chat room where you can connect with people (a maximum of 8) who have the same goal as you, for a short time (7 days for now). Think of it as a way to stay motivated, hold each other accountable, or simply work together with new people on something specific. Some examples can be: - Following a programming course - Reading a book - Getting back to the gym - Cleaning up your home - Shopping…
2024 · openquest.app · its alternatives →
- 19MW
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 →
- 20
Fully leaned into vibe coding this time around. Started on v0, at some point ejected into running locally (getting v0's exported folder to run locally was a challenge), then iterated with Cursor over the course of a few hours. Really neat how much can be accomplished just conversationally these days.
2025 · macrodata-refinement.arjit.me · its alternatives →
- 21AW
I have a YouTube channel (rithmic) that helps people to learn how to code. I have built this job board for them. Let me know your thoughts...
2024 · webdevjobs.io · its alternatives →
- 22ET
Hey Hacker News, For the last 2 months, I've been working on a testing agent to free developers from the endless maintenance of end-to-end tests. You just push up a PR, and our agent analyzes the code changes and automatically visits the preview to test things out like a real human! We also support describing tests in English (or even in the PR description), and we'll go through your site whenever you want via a GitHub action to test and make sure various core flows continue to work as expected. We are looking for early testers and are giving out a generous free tier! Just sign up on the…
2025 · playmatic.ai · its alternatives →
- 23ON
Inspired by HN posts like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10890032 we set out to make an onboarding platform that helps teams design and implement effective onboarding workflows. I'm reaching out to the HN community for feedback on our private beta. I'd really like to connect with those that have struggled with onboarding in the past to see if our tool can help. If you're interested in trying the product, tweet at me on twitter @raykanani :) Product link http://www.qrtrmstr.com/
2016 · its alternatives →
- 24MA
Hi there, So a buddy a couple of days ago came up with the idea for a new SaaS product regarding gpt and image generation. We did a quick MVP that barely works, it breaks almost 50% of the time but we still wanted to validate the idea before going all in. We have almost 1k followers on Twitter together. Did a quick post describing the idea with a stripe link in the comments with a 5$ value, no landing page, and no shipped product. In exchange, the buyers become beta users. Around 30 mins later we got our first sale next 30 mins another 5$ and so on. Do we consider the idea validated? The…
2023 · its alternatives →
Also compare
- A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released alternatives
- made a html5 game, polished it many many times alternatives
- The Hacking UI podcast #11 - Turning our side project into a full time gig alternatives
- a community for collaborating on sideprojects alternatives
- We made a game this week-end! alternatives
- I'm organizing a vibe coding game dev competition alternatives
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 →