nowfound

Dev tools · May 1, 2025

Robot Unlock – an open-ended programming game/zachlike

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…

Robot Unlock – an open-ended programming game/zachlike launched on May 1, 2025 with 43 votes, #647 of 7,905 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.

In plain words

Robot Unlock is an open-ended programming game where players write code to solve puzzles, built on esoteric languages like Befunge and Brainf*k. Originally created in 2010, this sequel arrives after the developer worked in the game industry and watched the genre grow through titles like SpaceChem. It's designed for programmers and puzzle enthusiasts who enjoy logic-based challenges and discovering multiple solutions to the same problem.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Robot Unlock is an open-ended puzzle game with 75+ levels. Design your own solutions and optimize them for speed, instructions or space and compare with other players. Create your own levels, challenge other players and solve community made ones.

After years of trying you finally manage to dial into other-space. You find that the dweller of other-space has challenging questions about computability and is asking for your help. You can use this widget-maker to generate a bit of HTML that can be embedded in your website to easily allow customers to purchase this game onfrom store.steampowered.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

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…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • IM
    I made a puzzle game that gently introduces my favorite math mysteries2024 · rahulilango.com · ▲1,054

    This is the first iteration of a short game I’m making that tries to interactively explain some of my favorite math questions / ideas. My goal is mostly to get the player curious and not necessarily to explain absolutely everything. There were a lot of fun technical parts to building this: - For implementation reasons, it’s much easier if the lines all have integer intersection points with each other. To do this, when a new line is added I “cheat” by rounding intersections to integers and then splitting the old lines at the intersection into new linds (with potentially different slopes)…

  • Game where you write Python robots to fight other players2013 · robotgame.org · ▲142

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

  • I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process2025 · github.com · ▲319

    I'm a software developer with 20+ years of experience but during this time I never programmed any games, but I really wanted to for the longest time. With the advent of AI coding agents I thought that this is the best time to try and so I've learned a bit of Phaser.js (a Javascript based game engine) and entered Beginner's Jam Summer 2025 - a game jam for beginners in the game dev industry that allows AI coding. After around 25-30 hours (working mainly after my full-time day job) I managed to submit the game I called "Tower of Time" (the theme of the jam was "Time Travel"). You can play it…

  • Ziva.sh Feb 2026 · ziva.sh · ▲82

    Hey everyone! Wanted to show off a little side project I've been working on. A lot of people have been using AI to one-shot games, but they're often quite buggy - glitchy graphics, collisions aren't setup, or regressions in earlier levels. With an AI playtester in the loop, I've been able to one-shot games like Candy Crush or Crossy Road that would previously have bugs like cut-off UIs or stuck retries. The way it works basically goes like this: 1/ The playtester starts by reading the code to understand what its parent AI is asking it to play, and to decide what breakpoints, hooks and…

  • A puzzle game inspired by functional programming, written in PureScript2015 · david-peter.de · ▲121

    A puzzle game inspired by functional programming.

  • IW
    I wrote a symmetry game with a daily puzzle2024 · hidden-mirrors.com · ▲126

    I’ve been working on a puzzle game for a few years as a side project. The game is based on a small region of tiles in a grid that is mirrored, modified, and mirrored again. It’s based on a novel phenomenon I noticed where, once these mutations happen a few times, the original region can be hard to recognize. You have a feeling there are symmetries in the image, but they are just out of grasp. Going further, if only part of the region is visible, such as mirroring off the edge of the board, it adds to the feeling and it becomes a satisfying puzzle to solve. I originally published this on the…

More dev tools this month

the category →
  • /dev/null▲472

    a social network for devs

    Dev tools · 2d ago · dev-null.sh

  • open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 27d ago · github.com

  • Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 25d ago · github.com

  • OpenBot▲362

    Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer

    Dev tools · 22d ago · openbot.run

  • Talanoa▲340

    Hi 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 · 20d ago · talanoa.email

  • CoreSpeed▲332

    One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools

    Dev tools · 27d ago · corespeed.io

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, May 2025

the whole month →
  • Tapflow 2.0▲1,125

    We built Tapflow for devs, designers, PMs, and tech folks who’ve been sitting on internal docs, templates, and systems — but never productized them. Upload a PDF, notes, or workshop deck, and Tapflow drafts a structured product (with chapters, teaser and pricing plans). It’s good for AI kits, onboarding guides, design systems, and frameworks. You can sell through Stripe, LemonSqueezy, or PayPal. Real-time collaboration is in early beta. No site builder, no LMS — clean design and just focused tools to ship. Fully bootstrapped and just launched on PH today →…

    Work · 2025 · tapflow.ai

  • C9

    Life & fun · 2025 · felixrieseberg.github.io

  • Appwrite 2.0 brings a new engine, a rebuilt Console, five database types, an S3 API, an OAuth 2.1 server, and organization-level Domains and Firewall.

    Dev tools · 2025 · appwrite.io

  • Perfect meeting memory in Notion

    AI · 2025 · notion.com

  • Den▲948

    Multiplayer AI agent builder

    AI · 2025 · getden.io

  • Powerful productivity on the go

    AI · 2025 · raycast.com