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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

I've been working on Athena Crisis for about two years, and full time for the past 9 months. The game is entirely built from scratch using React and CSS without a game engine. It runs anywhere, including the Steam Deck. You can even use a gamepad on the landing page to play! Previously the landing page had a video of the game but my goal was to always just put the actual game on the website. I merged the landing page into the game's monorepo, added the game's React components, and boom – the video was replaced with a playable version of Athena Crisis. Of course, the real game has tons more…

Athena Crisis is a strategy game built entirely with React and CSS that runs directly in web browsers and on Steam Deck. Players can try the game immediately on its website using a keyboard or gamepad, with the… 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. Play the game I'm developing directly on its website launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey HN! I'm so excited to open source Athena Crisis under the MIT-License and fund contributions to the game and the genre. If you like the game and want to support its development, please check it out on Steam or on athenacrisis.com.

    2024 · cpojer.net · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    21st.dev▲1,211

    I originally built this app to organize and reuse interesting React + Tailwind components I came across on Twitter, inspired by the shadcn/ui approach. Later, a friend started contributing their own components, and it got me thinking—this could grow into something bigger, like an NPM for design engineers to share and use components. Would love to hear your thoughts!

    2025 · 21st.dev · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Show HN: Boardzilla, a framework for making web-based board games Tldr: We’ve made a framework for web-based board games. You can try out some games over at https://boardzilla.io, or you can take a look at https://docs.boardzilla.io to learn more about how to develop your own game. Source is available at https://github.com/boardzilla Hey y’all. My brother and I have made a framework for board games. During the pandemic we started to look at BGA but got discouraged by how old-fashioned the tools were and how cumbersome the development process was. We set out…

    2024 · boardzilla.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Locofy.ai▲720

    Hey there, I am Honey - Co-founder at Locofy. We, along with other makers, have been building Locofy.ai to help massively accelerate the builders - the designers, developers, product managers & founders, and we're excited to share it today with the HN Community. Locofy.ai simply converts designs into production-ready frontend code for web and mobile apps. It adapts to your preferred design tools, tech stack, and workflows with ease and lets you launch upto 4x faster, while letting designers design the way they want and giving high-quality responsive code that developers love. With this…

    2022 · locofy.ai · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Repo here: https://github.com/ariroffe/personal-website

    2022 · arielroffe.quest · its alternatives →

  6. 6IL
  7. 7IM

    I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…

    2022 · battle-of-flags.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8IS
  9. 9

    I'm making a platform for simple open source games you can play anywhere. Games are all just JavaScript classes and you can read the source of every game on the platform. I started working on initial "games" (mostly rendering tests) in 2018 and eventually built all of the platform stuff around it to make it easy to share games. There's also an in-browser editor available for you to make and publish games all from the browser. Would love some feedback on the games and studio features as well as the platform overall. All of the code is available at https://github.com/homegamesio

    Jul 2026 · homegames.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Athena Crisis is a modern-retro turn-based tactical strategy game. Athena Crisis is open core technology. - nkzw-tech/athena-crisis

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    A 3D game rendered entirely in CSS/HTML. Relying as much as possible on traditional html/css features instead of modern graphic APIs. Supports lighting, shadows, culling, etc. Can you escape the dungeon?

    2020 · pantel.is · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Course for building a React site using components

    2018 · designcode.io · its alternatives →

  13. 13MP

    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 →

  14. 14

    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 →

  15. 15

    No-code platform for creating websites and web apps on React

    2021 · quarkly.io · its alternatives →

  16. 16SF

    Hi HN! I’ve been building a 2D game using a custom engine I wrote from scratch – no Unity, no frameworks. It’s fully self-funded and will be released commercially on Steam. Engine source code (MIT): http://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo I’d love feedback on the gameplay, visuals, performance, or anything else. Thanks!

    2025 · bereprobate.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Want to upgrade your JavaScript skills and learn React.js? Learn how to build websites and web apps in just a couple of afternoons.

    2015 · reactforbeginners.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hi HN! I built a 3D arcade racing game in HTML5 using PlayCanvas. It features arcade-style physics inspired by OutRun, with PS1/Dreamcast-style graphics. The multiplayer is asynchronous: you race against the “ghosts” (replays) of up to 7 other players, and after finishing a run you can share a link with a friend so they can race your ghost 1v1. The game currently has 20 tracks, plus a “daily challenge” mode with procedurally generated tracks. We’ve tested it on both desktop and mobile. It supports touch and keyboard controls, though I personally prefer playing with a keyboard in…

    2020 · gamesnacks.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    I made this game ten years ago without framework. It took my free time for months to develop. I find myself having fun playing it today. Maybe some will enjoy

    2023 · spiderdash.standupweb.net · its alternatives →

  20. 20BR
  21. 21AT
  22. 22

    Hey HN, I hacked together this fun project that lets you play any article on the front page of Hacker News as an interactive text game. You can create a game about anything by going to infinityarcade.com/ You can also use a URL, which is what this page uses. The whole thing is open source: https://github.com/themaximal1st/InfinityArcade

    2023 · infinityarcade.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    The Good Old game, built with Elixir, Phoenix, React and Redux - bigardone/phoenix-battleship

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    This is something that I've been working on on-and-off in my spare time for the last few years. I started in 2020 during Covid trying to do a Mount and Blade style map in UE4, and it grew from there until where it is now - I would just add a feature, then another, until it came together. Since the start of the year I've really been trying to polish it some more. I've got the full thing planned for a Q3 25 release. Github release if you don't have Steam: https://github.com/joe-gibbs/fall-of-an-empire-release

    2024 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

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