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

276 points

2 years ago

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.

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