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Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

athenacrisis.com

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Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#1
I've been working on Athena Crisis for about two years, and full time for the past 9 months. The game is entirely built from scratch using React and CSS without a game engine. It runs anywhere, including the Steam Deck. You can even use a gamepad on the landing page to play!

Previously the landing page had a video of the game but my goal was to always just put the actual game on the website. I merged the landing page into the game's monorepo, added the game's React components, and boom – the video was replaced with a playable version of Athena Crisis.

Of course, the real game has tons more features, but the landing page now always runs the exact same code as the actual game – including assets, the AI, and the UI/UX – and it is pushed within 5 minutes as the actual game is being updated live.

I frequently talk about the tech behind this game (see this React Summit talk about "How Not to Build a Video Game": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8SmXOTM8Ec ) and I'm planning on open sourcing as much as possible in the future.

Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website
athenacrisis.com

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#5
post #3

I tried it out, but it froze up my browser on Firefox + Windows on a pretty well-resourced desktop. The page loaded fine, but when I hit "Play" everything ground to a halt, and even scrolling the page up and down had a 3-5 second delay.

For a second perspective, i tried it on iPhone 13 Pro using brave and worked fine

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#6
post #3

I tried it out, but it froze up my browser on Firefox + Windows on a pretty well-resourced desktop. The page loaded fine, but when I hit "Play" everything ground to a halt, and even scrolling the page up and down had a 3-5 second delay.

Oh that sucks. If you don't mind helping me troubleshoot the issue: Does this also happen with a Chromium based browser? Any chance you could profile using Firefox's web tools and send it to me (Find my details on twitter.com/cpojer or on the bottom of cpojer.net).

Firefox has not been a focus for the game as it mostly ships on Chromium/WebKit based browsers/app wrappers, but the landing page should still work great.

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#7
post #2

Nice work! This reminds me of the "Advance Wars" game series on GBA.

Advance Wars is one of my favorite games of all time. Nakazawa Tech, the indie studio I founded, is aiming at recreating games that I loved playing as a kid, and building on top of them with twists and novel ideas.

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#8
Your game looks great! Love the color palette, I’ll keep an eye on this for sure.

Sorry for the curveball, but I’d be really interested in hearing about the process of finding your publisher (if you don’t mind) — it seems incredibly tough for devs without huge resumes right now, so I’m curious how the process went.

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