Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Pen and paper resource development game with an emergent world
I've been working for a while on trying to curate a game that has the emergence of procedurally generated computer games but that can be played with only pen and paper. Here I present the best version I've been able to come up with that is simple and emergent. I've really enjoyed being able to engage with this sort of game while not feeling like my brain in rotting. I recon my numeracy improves while playing it.
This pen-and-paper resource development game uses procedural generation mechanics to create emergent gameplay without requiring a computer. Players manage resources and navigate a dynamically generated world using only… 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.
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Took a break from the falling sand simulation blog posts this week to work on another small project. It's a little pixel world generator- each time you visit, you'll see a new little world. I really like this stuff and had a blast building it yesterday!
2022 · jason.today · its alternatives →
- 2IM
Hi HN! I made many small web games in the past with Unity or Phaser. But this time I wanted to make something completely on my own. So I coded a basic game framework in plain JavaScript, and used it to make Almost Pong. This was a really fun project that taught me a lot about JavaScript, and I plan to make more minimalist games with this framework. Interesting fact: Almost Pong doesn't load any assets, all sprites and sounds are generated with code. Happy to answer questions, and please let me know if you have any feedback on the game. Thanks!
2022 · lessmilk.com · its alternatives →
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Hey, maker here. After launching a daily word search game, I randomly thought of this math game while driving. Finally got around to making it and I think it turned out pretty cool. It’s a math search game that’s meant to help you practice your quick addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills. I’m hoping it’ll help people (even those like me who aren’t big on math) learn and increase their speeds. (There are also some settings you can enable to make the game harder) If you try it out, please let me know if you found it fun, if you have anything you’d like me to add, or if you…
2024 · worchle.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, I want to share a personal project: I made a tiny pen-plotted book for my wife. I did everything myself—drawings (with some help from Midjourney), plotting, cutting, and binding. I even used a 3D printer to make a helper tool. It's absolutely over-engineered, but I enjoyed it a lot. Multi-disciplinary projects, especially those with a physical output, are a lot of fun for me. The post covers the process in detail, but if you're interested in anything specific, let me know. Cheers!
2025 · muffinman.io · its alternatives →
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Hey there! I'm the brains behind the math crossword game on my site. This game is all about making math a little more fun – users just drag and drop numbers to fill in the blanks and move on to the next level if they get it right. Let me know if face any issues or have any suggestions! :)
2024 · scientific.place · its alternatives →
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Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go. If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)
2025 · abstractboardgames.com · its alternatives →
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Inspired by games like Turing Complete/Virtual Circuit Board/Logic World, I tried to make a mix of aseprite and wiredworld/wired-logic, the idea being the user can build a digital circuit using a "fullstack" pixelart creation workflow. The circuit is just an image. The primitives are (i) connected wires which have undefined, 0 or 1 state during simulation (displayed brighter or darker in function of the state) and (ii) NANDs, which are little pixel triangles. During simulation the user can interact with any wire by clicking on it, toggling its state, which is cool for messing…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9AS
FYI, I try to release something random on the 1st and 15th of every month, this was my latest. you can see my full list of projects on my twitter: https://twitter.com/lisperati/status/1543003744161484800
2022 · dreambookgame.com · its alternatives →
- 10MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
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I received a ticket from my product manager (my wife) to add a new feature for our largest customer (my kindergartner). The requirements doc included a worksheet from school that looked like this. I took that exact screenshot (blurriness, bad lighting, scribbles, and all) and…
2025 · mattsayar.com · its alternatives →
- 12ML
2010 · zetamac.com · its alternatives →
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Last week I proposed to my girlfriend with a board game I created with stable diffusion, lexica.art and DALLE. I wrote about the process, hope you'll find in interesting.
2022 · bogomolnyelad.substack.com · its alternatives →
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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 · its alternatives →
- 16RA
This is a project that I have been working on in my spare time for a while now. It's a new virtual tabletop for playing pen and paper role playing games online, but it takes an entirely different approach than anything out there right now. Rather than trying to turn pen and paper games into video games, with features centered around one-click damage calculations and detailed stats tracking, Roll20 focuses on storytelling. It has completely new features like background music, player journals, and an expansive art library with a built-in web search. The entire system runs on NodeJS, Padrino,…
2012 · kickstarter.com · its alternatives →
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I've been playing with this for quite some time and I think it's finally ready for public consumption. All feedback welcome.
2025 · madmonk13.github.io · its alternatives →
- 18AO
2013 · zachschnell.com · its alternatives →
- 19IM
Also inspired by this HN submission: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/findl... The model is gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18.
2024 · app4.hc11.org · its alternatives →
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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 →
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I had a dream on Nov 21, 2019 of a game. I woke up at 4:00pm that day, started programming it then, and 7 and 1/2 hours later, it was done. It's about you and a pink square going exploring. - otdav33/spelunko
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I built a procedurally generated word-search game where the puzzle never ends - as you scroll, the grid expands infinitely and new words appear. It’s designed to be quick to pick up, satisfying to play, and a little addictive. The core game works without an account using the pre-defined games, but signing up allows you to generate games using any topic you can think of. I’d love feedback on gameplay, performance, and whether the endless format feels engaging over time. If you try it, I’d really appreciate any bug reports or suggestions. Thanks in advance!
Dec 2025 · endless-wordsearch.com · its alternatives →
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I write to "poison" AI with my ideas. Mostly about software development and being human in a computer world.
2017 · pcmaffey.com · its alternatives →
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Centralized AI workspaces for any LLM. Secure and private. Save your team hours per week.
2023 · adventure.typingcloud.com · its alternatives →
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