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Show HN: I made a web game called Almost Pong (lessmilk.com)

1135 points by lessmilk ↗ HN
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!

188 comments

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m4rc3lv
I like it. Also the sounds are neat.
dylan604
If you can get the sounds to speed up, it sounds like the WOPR playing tic-tac-toe
ccakes
Awesome work! Super fun to burn 10mins on
bberenberg
This is great, I love it. Max score of 20.
loxias
This is fantastic! I love it. "I don't even like video games" :D

Having the experience of fail, score 1, score 1, score 14,... is really fun. I think it has just the right mix of difficulty/friction and reward, such that it's pretty easy to get success once you "lock in".

I'd be curious what your creative process is, if you start with a goal idea and then code to build it, or if you go the opposite direction, starting with what can be built and seeing how to make something fun out of it. I've never written any games, though it's something I think about.

dylan604
Ha! I read the instructions and did exactly what it said. Hit space once and the "ball" started to move on non-touch device, I was trying to figure out how to move the paddles so continuously kept watching the ball drop with 0 score. I was halfway convinced that it was a joke game (which would have been pretty clever).
mromanuk
yes, to the game creator, you should clarify that, happened the same to me. Something like "keep tapping spacebar"
nadermx
I applaud this, simply devilishly hard.
creakingstairs
This was pretty fun to play. Half way through the game I realised this was like flappy birds but within one screen. In saying that, this felt more fun to me because the space between each challenges was bigger, letting me I feel like I was more in control.
threeboy
I also saw the Flappy Pong similarties.
lessmilk
Yes, I was definitely inspired by Flappy Bird for this game. I could have called it Flappy Pong I guess.
inimino
I came to the comment section just to say that I was surprised this wasn't called Flappy Pong.

Nice game!

dietrichepp
Hah! I recognize this website from the “one game a week” stuff a while back. Had some fun playing those.
danielandrews43
You were one of my biggest inspirations for going into software engineering, I absolutely loved your website in high school and would always mess around with the source code to your games. Happy to see you’re still going!
lessmilk
This is awesome to hear! I stopped making games for a few years to focus on other things, but now I'd like to get back to it.
andai
Hey! Your 12 games in 12 weeks thing (back in ...2014? Jesus, time flies) was what got me into HTML5 game dev! So I wanted to say thank you for the inspiration :)

I especially appreciate the "loads no assets" aspect. I will take a look at the code in the morning!

p.s. have you considered the name "Flappy Pong"?

lessmilk
That's awesome to hear! And yes my "one game per week" challenge was in 2014.

This game was definitely inspired by Flappy Bird, but no I didn't think about that name before today.

erikig
I'm having a hard time believing it but Flappy Bird was launched over 8 years ago in 2013!
crispyalmond
This is such a good take on a classic. I love it!
jacksonkmarley
Cool.

Would be handy if the main page indicated which games were mobile capable so you didn't have to click through to find out.

jgauth
Nice. Simple and fun for a few minutes. I got 45
johnmaguire
Great game! On mobile my finger naturally drifted toward the bottom of the hit pad for visibility and I ended up clicking the link below it a couple times. Disappointing. :(
umurgdk
These games are so much fun (I'm talking about your other games too). Especially loved gravity snake and square
rubyron
29 on fifth try, on iPhone Safari. Love it!