Driftmania – an open source PICO-8 racing game
I've been spending a lot of my spare time over the last year creating this little racing game. It's built in PICO-8, which is a really fun “fantasy retro console” that's been mentioned on HN several times. The console has strict limits and I wanted to see how far I could push them The source code for the game is over here: https://github.com/maxbize/PICO-8/tree/master/Driftmania. It's a bit of a mess, but I'm happy to answer any questions on it or development of the game. Cheers! EDIT: For those not familiar with PICO-8, there's only a few inputs: arrow…
Driftmania – an open source PICO-8 racing game launched on February 16, 2024 with 276 votes, #140 of 3,962 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
Driftmania is an open-source racing game built for PICO-8, a fantasy retro console with strict technical limitations. The game features simple controls using arrow keys and a few button inputs, and demonstrates how far developers can push the platform's constraints. The complete source code is available on GitHub, with the creator open to answering questions about development and the game's design decisions.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Tiny Tracks. Fast Laps
Driftmania is an arcade time trial racing game. Your goal is to get the fastest possible time on each of the 15 challenging tracks Interested in competing for the best possible times? Join the speedrun Discord and submit your times at speedrun.com/driftmania It's impossible with my skills, but I thought it would be nice to be able to run over the fences and take shortcuts if I could do it well, MEOW! Feels great to play, nice effects, effective sounds and music. Well done! Pretty nice! The drift feature is good and not easy to get the hang of, but once you get it, it's super fun and rewarding! I love it. Bug report: I started a track and right after the beeping started, paused, hit "quit…from frenchie14.itch.io
In the maker’s words, at launch
I've been spending a lot of my spare time over the last year creating this little racing game. It's built in PICO-8, which is a really fun “fantasy retro console” that's been mentioned on HN several times. The console has strict limits and I wanted to see how far I could push them The source code for the game is over…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 yearsJul 2026 · homegames.io · ▲229I'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
- TSTramway SDK – An unholy union between Half-Life and Morrowind engines2025 · racenis.github.io · ▲660
Hello everyone, I would like to see if there is any interest in this little project that I have been working on for the past few years. Could be relevant, seeing the direction in which the mainstream game engines are going. I didn't really like any of the already existing options, so I tried to make my own and it turned out to be easier than expected. It's sort of like a low-budget Unreal/Source, but with open-world streaming support and it is free and open source. Very old-school. But optimized for more modern hardware. Very fast too. Still not production ready, but it seems like it is…
- IMI made a retro game archive for Polish games2023 · polishpixels.com · ▲216
Hi, As a 8-bit C64 game coder in eaarly 90ties and currently mostly FE-focused dev, decided to give a go to a simple retro game archive. This is purely fun project - so i decided to post it to HN, mayne it'll resonate :)
GameSnacks2020 · gamesnacks.com · ▲65Hi 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…
An Open Retro RPG Game Maker in Python2016 · github.com · ▲215Retro RPG Game Maker. Contribute to ericoporto/fgmk development by creating an account on GitHub.
I built a handheld CHIP-8 game console to teach myself embedded systems2022 · github.com · ▲128A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…
More dev tools this month
the category →
open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 28d ago · github.com
Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 26d ago · github.com
OpenBot▲362Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer
Dev tools · 23d ago · openbot.run
Talanoa▲346Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…
Dev tools · 21d ago · talanoa.email
CoreSpeed▲332One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools
Dev tools · 29d ago · corespeed.io
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, February 2024
the whole month →
MarketingIdeas.com▲1,230Never run out of marketing ideas ever again
Growth · 2024 · marketingideas.com
