I open-sourced my Steam game, 100% written in Lua, engine is also open
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Homebrew engine https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo
HN · launched Mar 6, 2026 · 65 upvotes (top 14%) · 0 views
Niche: game development engines · 85 launches, 1 in the last 7 days ▼ -86% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Dev tools
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 85 launches in game development engines →
Could you build this?
No Building both an entire custom game engine from scratch and a full commercial-grade game released on Steam requires deep graphics programming, audio pipelines, cross-platform low-level systems, and game design.
What it would actually take: The stack involves a custom C or C++ game engine exposing a Lua scripting runtime, handling OpenGL/Vulkan rendering, spatial audio, physics, and input handling. The hardest challenges are low-level engine architecture (memory management, frame timing, cross-platform platform abstraction) and authoring complete game mechanics, animations, and assets. Deep systems engineering and game engine development expertise are essential.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Balatro (Lua/Love2D game example), Love2D game engine
Concerns raised: Source code not properly documented without README, Misuse of 'open source' term - actually source-available under copyright, Source code trivial to extract from Steam installation, No clear documentation on how to run or understand the code
Feature requests: Add README.md with proper documentation, Add LICENSE file to repository, High-level explanation of code functionality
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 294 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #52 of 295 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 128 days after the earliest competitor.
- My biggest solo-project: Game engine with its own programming language · hn · 2026-05-25 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I made a 2D Lua game engine using Rust with code and asset live reload · hn · 2026-05-19 · 30 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Game Engine in Julia with 400KB Exports (Vs Unity's 200MB) · hn · 2026-02-17 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- openaok · github · 2026-10-26 · 24 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- I'm writing an alternative to Lutris · hn · 2026-01-22 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years · hn · 2026-07-05 · 229 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- fukami · github · 2026-10-04 · 40 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Millennium · hn · 2026-08-14 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.43
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.