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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Program a robot to solve a maze on a CPU emulator

A little game I made to show off an old project. The functionality of the CPU is derived entirely from simulated logic gates. All the operations and control flow are based on the underlying properties of the logic gates, and changing their operation leads to corresponding changes in function. The original game code is all python and it runs in the browser using wasm/pyodide. Not very mobile friendly

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Program a robot to solve a maze on a CPU emulator launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    robotgame.org is for sale on Spaceship. Secure checkout and quick transfer. See all purchase options. No hidden fees.

    2013 · robotgame.org · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    An educational puzzle game. Solve a series of tasks where you build increasingly powerful components. Starts with the simplest logical components and ends up with a programmable computer.

    2018 · nandgame.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3IM
  4. 4

    I am proud to present my solo hobby project NAND. This year-long undertaking follows the completed Nand to Tetris course, but ported to the web with its own runtime, user interface, and IDE. Using the "Load example program" selector, you can try out some programs I wrote on NAND's emulated hardware such as 2048, a genetic algorithm, and a manual stack overflow to corrupt the screen. Check out NAND at https://nand.arhan.sh Additionally, I've authored an extensive writeup about the project. Read about it on the GitHub repository's readme.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Bomberman-like arena for bots coded in Python

    2021 · dnds.gocoder.one · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    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 →

  7. 7

    I built ChipBuilder to make computer architecture more approachable through interactive puzzles. You start with basic logic gates like AND, OR, and NOT, then gradually combine them into adders, multiplexers, memory, an ALU, and eventually a complete CPU. Once you've built the hardware, you can write assembly programs that run on the processor you created. The game is inspired by courses like Nand2Tetris, but everything runs directly in the browser with a visual circuit editor, simulations, and progressively harder challenges.

    Jul 2026 · select.supply · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    I got pretty good at (and very addicted to) the lunar lander game from a few days ago... so I decided to make an autopilot for the lander based on what I felt like was the best strategy! Now I can have perfect landings every time without lifting a finger :D Writing the autopilot code was a lot more fun than I expected! It felt a bit like programming a robot. Source code: https://github.com/szhu/lunar-lander-autopilot Original lander HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35032506

    2023 · szhu.github.io · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    I built a tiny 8-bit CPU simulator in Python to better understand how computers work at a low level. It visualizes registers, memory, and instructions in real-time, so you can actually see each operation as it happens. You can write simple assembly code and watch how the CPU executes it step by step. The project is mainly for learning and experimentation, but I’d love feedback or ideas for improvement.

    Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    This is a little toy project of mine that lets you simulate digital logic graphs. It was inspired by Minecraft's Redstone and the Piet esolang. It's got some serious drawbacks-- you write circuits as PNGs and simulate them with a Python interface. It's slow to run and slow to experiment with. And it is certainly difficult to use for people with any kind of color blindness. But despite that, I hope this can still be a fun toy!

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11AA

    This is a weekend project that spiraled out of control. I was originally trying to get Claude to play a ROM of the SNES SimCity. I struggled with it and that led me to Micropolis (the open-sourced SimCity engine) and was able to get it to work by bolting on an API. The weekend hack turned into a headless city simulation platform where anyone can get an API key (no signup) and have their AI agent play mayor. The simulation runs the real Micropolis engine inside Cloudflare Durable Objects, one per city. Every city is public and browsable on the site. LLMs are awful at the spatial stuff, which…

    Feb 2026 · hallucinatingsplines.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    Gateway▲56

    A puzzle-based platformer where you control a robot

    2015 · cockroach.se · its alternatives →

  13. 13DA

    over the past couple months, i've picked up an old project around writing AI in python. the premise is to code a strategy for an AI player to use in a simplified RTS game. the AI basically takes the seat of a human player and the human codes its brain. main site: http://okayzed.github.com/dmangame/introduction.html app engine server and match archive that runs and hosts games: http://dmangame-app.appspot.com github: http://github.com/okayzed/dmangame more AI: http://github.com/okayzed/dmanai i'm looking for players, comments, ideas, etc - thanks!

    2011 · okayzed.github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    The game for little programmers

    2015 · exploratoriumstore.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    I was fascinated reading through another recent HN submission about a highly efficient implementation of A* in Lisp, which got me thinking about how I could do something similar in Python. However, these kinds of pathfinding algorithms really need complex terrain/mazes with interesting obstructions to showcase what they can do and how they work. So, I started thinking about how I could generate cool and diverse random "mazes" (they aren't really mazes, but I'm not sure what the best term is). I got a bit carried away thinking of lots of different cool ways to generate these mazes, such…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16IW
  17. 17GD

    2019 · adventuresinlogicland.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18RL

    Hello Hacker News! We're Yangqing, Xiang and JJ from lepton.ai. We are building a platform to run any AI models as easy as writing local code, and to get your favorite models in minutes. It's like container for AI, but without the hassle of actually building a docker image. We built and contributed to some of the world's most popular AI software - PyTorch 1.0, ONNX, Caffe, etcd, Kubernetes, etc. We also managed hundreds of thousands of computers in our previous jobs. And we found that the AI software stack is usually unnecessarily complex - and we want to change that. Imagine if you are a…

    2023 · lepton.ai · its alternatives →

  19. 19TP

    Hi HN, I have been working on this website for a few weeks with some buddies of mine and would love if you checked it out. TuringJest provides a jackbox-esque experience with its two game modes. *One Shot Prompt* - Submit a prompt for all players (including the AI) to answer. - Answer your prompts in the way that you think ChatGPT would answer them. - Vote for who you think the real AI is. *Talk It Out* - Plan an event in a group chat with your friends. - Trick everyone into thinking you are the AI while voting for the real AI. Let me know what you think!

    2023 · turingjest.app · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    A digital logic simulation written in C. Contribute to rzscheck/logic development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hello, In 2010 I made an open-ended programming game based on Befunge and Brainf*k. I was young and didn't know what I was doing - coding it in AutoIT of all things and using borderless windows for sprites. Nevertheless, it was a full game and some people actually played it, sharing solutions with each other. I took it as a sign that the game had some potential - I appreciated this very much at the time. It was zachlike at its core, except that it came out earlier than SpaceChem and the term hadn't been coined yet. Years passed, I worked in the game industry, had some fun, learned a few…

    2025 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22IM

    I found a cellular automaton which creates some interesting patterns similar to those found in nature.

    2025 · byronknoll.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    A simulated CPU built using only NAND gates. Contribute to IsaacLewis/NAND-CPU development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2011 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hi HN, I'm Oliver. I've been in the software and cloud engineering industry for a long time (28 years), and this past year genuinely changed how I think about coding. The bottleneck isn’t syntax anymore. It’s clarity. I now spend more time describing what I want, testing results, and refining instructions than writing code line by line. The spark for this project came from a presentation I gave at my son’s school in December, 2025. I expected mild interest. Instead, kids were completely engaged — hands up, pitching game ideas, iterating in real time. That made me question something I’d…

    Jan 2026 · pixelarcade.studio · its alternatives →

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