AI · alternatives · 2026

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   Quake ported to safe Rust, playable in browser▲241

   Quake (1996), faithfully ported to dependency-free safe Rust and compiled to WebAssembly — play the shareware episode in your browser.

   14d ago · quake-srp.pages.dev · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Web Quake▲81

   The original Quake in your browser

   2015 · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Q3Edit – Edit and play Quake 3 maps in the browser▲106

   I've been building a level editor for Quake 3 that runs entirely in the browser: Radiant-style layout, brush and patch editing, CSG, terrain sculpting, and entity editing. It opens and saves .map file and you can play the maps you build directly in the browser using a webassembly build of ioquake3.

   Jul 2026 · q3edit.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Quake ported to 3D CSS (no WebGL)▲13

   Play a browser Quake port rendered as inspectable HTML and CSS 3D geometry through PolyCSS, with no WebGL or canvas renderer.

   Jun 2026 · cssquake.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Explore Quake/Half-Life maps in your browser▲192

   Explore Quake/GoldSrc maps in your browser. Contribute to sbuggay/bspview development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   asciiQuake▲16

   Play Quake rendered as a live ASCII character grid through GlyphCSS, with no WebGL or canvas renderer.

   Sep 2026 · asciiquake.wtf · its alternatives →

7. 7
   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 →

8. 8IM
   I made a web game called Almost Pong▲1,135

   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 →

9. 9IB
   I built an indie, browser-based MMORPG▲340

   I've been working on an MMORPG that is now in alpha as a solo developer. Here are the major open source technologies that I use: Blender - 3D modeling software for creating the overall environment and every game object. I've gotten a lot of CC and Public Domain assets from https://poly.pizza GLTF - I export assets from blender to the GLTF asset format JSON - I write a JSON config for every game object that describes things like its name, its interactions, its collisions, etc. Node.js exporter - I iterate over the environment and every asset to create a scene hierarchy. I use…

   2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · its alternatives →

10. 10
    A Marble Madness-inspired WebGL game we built for Netlify▲616

    Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers. Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users. The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view…

    2024 · 5-million-devs.netlify.com · its alternatives →

11. 11AV
    A Visual IDE for React▲479

    I made this because building UIs in a lexical medium like code is super annoying. I have to pre-render what I’m making in my head, and then jump between the browser and IDE to test. I was inspired by the developer console in chrome and safari since I end up editing css there because it’s ironically more convenient. Hope it’s useful!

    2022 · dev.aspect.app · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Framer Playground▲357

    A new creative coding environment in Framer X

    2019 · framer.com · its alternatives →

13. 13D1
    Doom (1993) in a PDF▲369

    I made a Doom source port that runs within a PDF file. I was inspired by the recent HN post about Tetris in a PDF (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645218) and I wondered if I could get Doom to run using a similar method. It turns out that old versions of Emscripten can compile C to asm.js code that will happily run inside the limited JS runtime of the PDF engine. I used the doomgeneric (https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric) fork of the original Doom source, as that made writing the IO fairly easy. All I had to do was implement a framebuffer and…

    2025 · doompdf.pages.dev · its alternatives →

14. 14IM
    I made a browser-based RTS game▲212

    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 →

15. 15IR
    I recreated 90s Mode X demoscene effects in JavaScript and Canvas▲189

    After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…

    2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →

16. 16MP
    My platforming game written in C 89▲127

    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 →

17. 17
    Little Procedural Pixel Worlds▲227

    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 →

18. 18AR
    A remake of my 2004 PDA video game▲106

    My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…

    2024 · nicollet.net · its alternatives →

19. 19WP
    Weekend project, D3.js Globe of Recent Earthquakes▲79

    2012 · boydgreenfield.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++▲146

    Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    MeshEdit▲61

    Model, rig and animate game assets in your browser

    Sep 2026 · meshedit.xyz · its alternatives →

22. 22OL
    OpenArena Live – In-Browser Quake with Multiplayer Using WebRTC▲11

    Play OpenArena (Quake 3 clone) in your browser with friends! Free FPS multiplayer, no download required.

    2019 · openarena.live · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Animdock Motion Templates in the Browser▲109

    Create trend motions in your browser!

    Jun 2026 · animdock.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Ambient, a multiplayer game engine and platform using WASM/WebGPU/Rust▲90

    Earlier this year, we released our open-source game engine [0] built with Rust, WebAssembly, and WebGPU. Today, we’re happy to announce the Ambient platform, which brings web deployment, server hosting, and more to the runtime. With Ambient, you can make a game, deploy it to the browser in one command, share your URL and instantly play with others, no downloads or installs needed. Our WASM use is innovative; it is being used as both a sandboxed runtime for user code, and as a way to run the entire Ambient runtime in the browser. This, paired with our ECS data model, enables a highly modular…

    2023 · ambient.run · its 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 →