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Dev tools · January 11, 2026

1D-Pong Game at 39C3

Building a 1D-Pong game is a bit of a rite of passage at the Chaos Communication Congress. I was inspired by a version I saw at 38C3 and built my own interpretation for 39C3. Lots of people enjoyed playing it and even Elliot Williams featured it in his 39C3 Hackaday Podcast. And I can attest: it's truly fun because it's sooo simple at first sight - but wait until the speed increases... Not a bad work to fun created ratio for such a little project. I used the opportunity to play around with Claude Code on my preexisting codebase to publish a nice-ish repo on GitHub. It worked great without…

1D-Pong Game at 39C3 launched on January 11, 2026 with 69 votes, #485 of 14,584 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.

In plain words

This is a 1D-Pong game built for the Chaos Communication Congress, inspired by similar projects at previous events. Players control a paddle on a single dimension to hit a ball back and forth, with difficulty increasing as speed rises. The game is designed as a simple but engaging interactive experience, created with Claude Code assistance and published on GitHub for developers interested in building their own versions or variations.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

A simple 1D-Pong game built with an ESP32 (WEMOS D1), a WS2812B LED strip, and two buttons - ogermer/1d-pong

A two-player reaction game played on a single strip of WS2812B LEDs. Players compete by pressing their button at the right moment when the ball enters theirfrom github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

Building a 1D-Pong game is a bit of a rite of passage at the Chaos Communication Congress. I was inspired by a version I saw at 38C3 and built my own interpretation for 39C3. Lots of people enjoyed playing it and even Elliot Williams featured it in his 39C3 Hackaday Podcast. And I can attest: it's truly fun because…

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