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Airmash – a game that refused to die

janwillemboer.nl

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Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#21

Post by gadgetoid »

Oh boy, this was an addiction. Just the right mix of classic - Subspace/Continuum - gameplay with the ease of access of a browser game. It felt good to play a game I was half decent at, too. Wrote a Python API, started a Discord server and then life got in the way. Good times, though!

Edit: It’s a little dead these days, but- https://discord.gg/cPVDwRa

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#23

Post by gadgetoid »

xwdv wrote: post #22

Can someone explain the appeal of the game? Seems like a pretty basic air shooter, not sure why it became a cult classic.

Easy to learn, hard to master, as simple as opening a browser tab to get it up and running. It was a perfect storm of tight gameplay and low barrier to entry. I also suspect many people hadn’t come across a game like this before- I can’t even name a multiplayer top down shooter like this save for Continuum.

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#24

Post by SubiculumCode »

RisenTide wrote: post #13

Since Airmash was released on HN, this is as good as any place to put out a message for the original developer -- we love your work! Is there any chance we could continue it more officially in your stead? There have been a ton of ideas floating around in-game since almost forever. I think by now most of them appear at https://github.com/airmash-refugees/game-ideas/issues . The biggest issue is that no free frontend e…

I second this call!

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#26

Post by molmalo »

gadgetoid wrote: post #23
xwdv wrote: post #22

Can someone explain the appeal of the game? Seems like a pretty basic air shooter, not sure why it became a cult classic.

Easy to learn, hard to master, as simple as opening a browser tab to get it up and running. It was a perfect storm of tight gameplay and low barrier to entry. I also suspect many people hadn’t come across a game like this before- I can’t even name a multiplayer top down shooter like this save for Continuum.

I guess for many of the players of old, it was because of the community, that was comprised mainly of HN folks. So, the chat was very nice and interesting.

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#27

Post by your-nanny »

janwillemb wrote: post #17
chewzerita wrote: post #16

HN hug of death! Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20191130223010/https://www.janwi...

I totally admit I wasn't prepared for this. Mirror here: https://github.com/spatiebot/airmash-history/blob/master/REA...

thank you for writing this history up. I am a regular but never really got involved in the effort to revive (except to announce it's return 10 months ago on HN)--I didn't really know the story.

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#29

Post by Supermancho »

xwdv wrote: post #22

Can someone explain the appeal of the game? Seems like a pretty basic air shooter, not sure why it became a cult classic.

Also, a game that's basically 2.5 years old "refusing to die" is not particularly interesting. Games wax and wane for years before becoming mainstream or dying off.

Re: Airmash – a game that refused to die

#30

Post by mkoryak »

this reminds me of subspace. another game that refused to die and was maintained by players. except this happened before waaaaay before git was a thing, around 1998.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)

I played this game for 8+ hours per day in middle school and high school and it was a major reason for me not getting into any good schools. It was worth it.

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