Shoot-em-up Deck Building game
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Hey, I've shared this game while it was still a work in progress in one of the Tell HN threads. I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of people tried it, and I got some positive feedback and constructive criticism.Anyway, I found a gamedev library I really like - Kaplay [1]. What I like about it is that easy things are easy. Meaning I could have fun building the game without learning (or fighting) a new tool. I always wanted to make games, but this is the first one I actually did.And I have to tell you - game development sparks joy! It combines so many things (game design, programming, art, sounds, UI...), and it is incredibly fun.The game is a combination of action and turn-based gameplay. Probably a too ambitious goal, but I think I managed to make a fun little game. If you are not sure what I'm talking about, try playing the tutorial, it should help. There is also a global leaderboard, which is dominated by my friend, and I would appreciate if someone can dethrone him :)It is completely free. I'm thinking of open sourcing it, but the code isn't up to my regular standards, as I was learning on the go. Also, I was more excited about adding stuff than going back and refactoring. So I'm still deciding on that one.Before you ask, no, I haven't vibe-coded it. For me personally, that would mean delegating the fun stuff to something else. I’ve been working on it for about a month, in the evenings after my kid is asleep.All feedback is appreciated![1] https://kaplayjs.com/P.S. I also plan a blog post or two about it. I already started an interactive demo on how missiles are coded.
HN · launched Jan 6, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 90%) · 0 views
Niche: indie video games · 203 launches, 20 in the last 7 days ▼ -23% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 203 launches in indie video games →
Could you build this?
Yes Built using the high-level JavaScript Kaplay 2D gaming library, a deck-building shmup prototype can be built and iterated on quickly with AI coding assistants.
Discussion
1 comment analyzed.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 584 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #573 of 585 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 69 days after the earliest competitor.
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