Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
firefoxd
TeMPOraL
> The fluidity on a mobile device? It's fantastic.
Said more about it here[0] already, but the game works perfectly on a foldable and takes the folding/unfolding in stride, without breaking a sweat. You can also see it on desktop by resizing your browser window to change size and aspect ratio (it's probably the same code paths handling it anyway).
Given how almost all mobile and web games I played manage to get this scenario wrong in some way, I applaud the authors for making all the right choices.
--
shayway
It really is lovely. I had the same thought about refining interactions a bit -- I would also suggest Meadow by Might & Delight as an example of nonverbal communication done well.
Blahah
The game is wonderful and I'm so glad it doesn't have chat! My 9yo niece and I played it through side by side and if it had chat or consistent remote player presence that wouldn't have been appropriate.
firefoxd
That's why I suggested other means of communication other than chat.
web007
There's a poop symbol on the bottom right, click it to see ways to communicate.
I was surprised to learn the random messengers are other humans!
Blahah
Absolutely - I love those. I wonder if there are any other simple web games like this that run on mobile with more nuanced interplayer comms as you suggest.
bitbasher
I had a great time jumping around and some other runners joined me and I realized I wasn't the only one playing. We began to communicate via jumping.
supportengineer
Reminds me of dancing with random strangers in "Playstaion Home" on the PS3
Den_VR
I’ll admit to missing PlayStation Home. In some ways it was ahead of it’s time. And looking at what’s available now, I’d argue it seems it still is.
maplethorpe
You can communicate by sending emojis with the menu in the bottom right.
araes
If you have a keyboard, then upper keys 1-2...9-0 do all the emojis as hotkeys. Ex, 9 does the takeout food, which is probably meant to be "busy, eating" or something similar.
kaismh
You need to click on npc to start conversation, one of them is office worker, he will give you a delivery
fouc
I thought it could be operated entirely from the keyboard, thanks for the tip on clicking! lol
Levitating
I think it's the curvature of the world that's making it run so well on mobile. There's never to much models on-screen to draw.
kridsdale1
Don’t neglect that 2020+ mobile chips are better at graphics than PlayStation 4.
CaptainOfCoit
Fun quip but doesn't seem to be true in practice (if we're talking strictly smartphones, not tablets).
PS4 specs: ~1.84 TFLOPS FP32, 18 GCN CUs @ 800 MHz, 8 GB GDDR5 @ 176 GB/s.
I think maybe some released-yesterday phone might get close on spikes/bursts, but not on any sustained loads, like gaming, nor would the beat the PS4 on image quality either.
peanutz454
Even if it is only true in theory, it is still amazing to know.
crumby
I did not know that.
Cloudef
The curvature makes the world seem big and gives quite beautiful scenic view when you are on the rooftop of a building in the town.
TeMPOraL
It also gives an eerie, otherworldly feelings when there's only sky ahead, taking more than 2/3 of the screen, and looking more like water flowing vertically. I had few moments when I suddenly felt like I'm inside a bubble, staring at its wall curving upwards.
This game is beautiful in every way.
DenisDolya
I also didn't really understand how to do it, but I liked the game, it's so beautiful and peaceful, it's a shame there's no chat and you have to speak through emojis.
red_trumpet
Some people have an arrow on top of their head, and when you approach them there is a dialog balloon with "...". If you click on them they give you a task.
DenisDolya
Thanks
modernerd
One of the artists behind this, Vicente Lucendo, has a case study here explaining how they made a previous project (Summer Afternoon):
https://www.awwwards.com/summer-afternoon.html
And a talk here on the same project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIxyyEaPr0
It's full of tips that likely informed this new project. In short, seems like:
- No game engine
- Three.js plus https://github.com/gkjohnson/three-mesh-bvh
- Houdini and Blender for modelling
- Substance for texturing
- Figma and Affinity Photo for UI
- GSAP and vanilla JS for animation
- Davinci Resolve for sound
- WebSocket/Node.js for multiplayer
Plus a lot of experience, creativity, and artistry to solve other challenges (e.g. shaders, shadows) and wire everything together into this pretty performant piece of art.
The studio also has a case study here of another project they made, with other hints about their tooling and process:
https://www.awwwards.com/igloo-inc-case-study.html
Just for anyone like me who played this and spent the whole time thinking, "this is beautiful, who are you and how did you make this?" The author names are only revealed in the credits at the end:
https://x.com/michaelsungaila (nice work on the beach shader!)
https://www.kevincolombin.com/ (music)
araes
On that subject, and since the Summer Afternoon direct link was not provided, can anybody actually get the project to work? Apparently made it on to HN 2.5 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34461808 Not sure if its just my system, yet I always start stuck in the ground unable to move.
gettingoverit
So there are - sloth on a tree - UFO in a forest - playground - alien on a beach
What's the 5th thing you have to find?
araes
There's one of the houses with a platform...
Sobrino
I made a reply asking if anyone has some behind the scenes information on making games like this! Thanks for sharing!
ionwake
Thank you so much for this post, excellent
retinaros
what was the approach for the cell shading look do you know?
modernerd
Custom tooling, mentioned briefly here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIxyyEaPr0&t=1177s
But this new game seems to make use more textures and cell shading.
EmilyHughes
This is impressive but I don't get it. All that work and you have a game written in JS of all things. Why not write it in a desktop language und port it to JS. Now this will always need a browser to run, feels like a waste of time to me.
modernerd
Or, reframing:
- This will _only_ need a browser to run. No console. No PC rig. No Steam account. No account at all. You just need a link to play it.
- Why use a heavy game engine and all the baggage that can bring when you can make a lightweight prototype in JS, prove value in the browser, then port to desktop if you choose to.
Browser games are an underexplored art form.
cluckindan
First you make the money, then hire someone else to port it to native. That’s what Vampire Survivors did.
DecoySalamander
You're looking at it in the wrong way. It's written in the native language of the best content delivery platform we have available.
hedora
It’ll also run pretty well on pretty much any OS. If I had a BSD box with GPU acceleration laying around, I’d give it a spin.
wiseowise
> Now this will always need a browser to run, feels like a waste of time to me.
As opposed to creating binaries for every platform and be subject to every possible store scrutiny on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac?
That not a waste of time for sure.
What am I ever reading?
undefined
sh4rks
Can always use Electron or Tauri to turn it into a native app
hagbard_c
Electron and native do not belong in the same sentence AFAIK unless you mean 'native to the browser (which happens to be included in the package)'. Tauri is the same, just bring your own 'browser' (webview, really).
undefined
pkdpic
This is like a masterclass in game design, mobile UI, wasm, character design, game dialogue and interactive paychogeography. I'm gonna show this to my kid's computer club next week. Really fantastic, bravo. Is this seriously a solo developer project??
If anyone knows of similar games / apps / software tools that I could show as examples of solo developer small scope simple UI games I'm always trying to find more..
araes
From qingcharles post earlier, three people with abeto.co (https://abeto.co/). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45397933
> https://xcancel.com/abeto_co
> https://xcancel.com/vlucendo
colkassad
Return of the Obra Dinn!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/653530/Return_of_the_Obra...
abustamam
Haven't played Obra Dinn yet (it's on my list of games to play together with my wife), but anything by its developer Lucas Pope is a masterpiece. Papers Please, while it infuriated me at times (apparently I suck at following rules and spotting differences) was just amazing. Available on mobile and PC.
darkvertex
Also if you have the delightful "Playdate" game console, his game Mars After Midnight is charming and not stressful.
codys
There's also an article on another game by the same folks that's similar (but earlier) which describes some details on building it
MattRix
The iOS game Tiny Wings was made by a solo developer (Andreas Illiger). I highly recommend it. It’s over a decade old now, but it just got update this year, and it still stands out in my mind as one of the best mobile games ever made.
kettlecorn
One of the most impressive things about this is that it transfers only 5.7 MB of data on initial load and then caps out at 17.5 MB for the final load.
It seems to be making smart choices about compression techniques.
This is a good showcase of how well games can work on the web if done well.
noduerme
So many techniques that made web games good, in terms of smart loading, have been lost or abandoned since the mid-2000s when bandwidth limitations were common, and at the same time "engines" like Away3D and Starling were starting to leverage AS3's ability to handle async calls and async uploads to the GPU. JS engines now try to bundle that behavior into asynchronous asset loading calls, but it's not ever really dialed in to make sure you don't experience freezes or hiccups in gameplay, so usually it's loaded by game level and not fluidly as you move around a world. It's not as if the authors of this game couldn't have put it all in a 17.5 MB package, and most people wouldn't have noticed anymore because the world has gotten used to long initialization screens. What's awesome is to see someone do the art of lazy loading so elegantly.
jayd16
I wouldn't say the techniques are lost. I think a LOT of work goes into streaming assets in games. It's just focused on streaming from disk.
There's no market for flash style web games so you don't see it.
TeMPOraL
Am I wrong in feeling that 5-15MB is... more than enough data for the world we see? There's not that much information here.
I'm not trying to be a demoscene smart-ass here, either (I expect demoscene masters would've packed the equivalent in under 1MB). Just that, models are low-poly, the world is small and made up from pieces that feel simple to describe; as long as you're not trying to bake everything into a static set of meshes, but willing to encode them at a higher level, 5MB seems like plenty.
For a dimensionally reduced analogy, the 2D equivalent would be a perfect example of an image that's very large in raster form, but quite small in vector form.
Are my intuitions widely off here?
Note that this does not make it any less impressive - on the contrary, I'm amazed by how much detail and soul is there to this world, despite apparent simplicity. I'm also amazed at how navigable this world is. I've made many stupid moves that I was dead sure will wedge me between walls, or get me stuck in a nook with no way of going back; but none of that happened. They must've put a lot of thought into the design, and it wouldn't surprise me if they manually mapped out the world to ensure there's no one-way paths.
kettlecorn
It's pretty good! I peaked a little bit under the hood and most of the size is going into the 3D models and secondly the sound effects. The largest single asset is the looping music track which is 2.3 MB.
The 3D models are compressed with 'Draco' compression. So for example the largest asset is a model of the entire world which is 333 kB. It consists of 81k vertices. Unoptimized that would mean at least 3 32 bit floats per vertex, which would be at least 972 kB uncompressed. So Draco compression is doing a pretty good job getting the model sizes down.
I'd have to dig into it more but I suspect if they wanted to they could have trimmed the size down quite a bit, but it may not be worth the effort. They could have used more repeat 3D models, but instead it looks like they went for a more artist driven look where most of the world is uniquely modeled.
It also looks like they're sending a bunch of lower res levels of detail per model over the network. That also is a tradeoff. Still with network speeds as they are nowadays it may be faster / simpler to send those over the wire each time instead of regenerating the level of detail.
The textures are a similar story. Well compressed but they're sending procedural noise over the network. Those could be generated but it's also trivial to send them over the network.
m-schuetz
10MB for non-procedutal content is really really good. The world is quite rich in detail for a low poly world, that quickly adds up.
hedora
I thought it was higher, but median page weight is over one mb, and 90’th percentile is 7-8 mb:
https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/page-weight#fig-37
So, 5-15 for a video game (vs a static document) is pretty good!
stavros
I don't disagree, but I've seen some React apps load more than that, and they were definitely not more complex than this game.
high_priest
I was shocked that the game loaded fairly quickly on a 128kbps connection. I only wish it would say that it is loading additional data, because I was stuck on white screen for a bit, with no info on the state.
I love it.
sheepscreek
I can echo everyone here in saying the graphics of the game and the execution is fantastic. The keyboard controls on desktop and the thumb control on mobile works great. This got me very excited about the future! Can’t imagine the amount of effort that would have gone in this.
One additional input, although I could play it well on the desktop - the mobile gameplay made me a tad nauseous. I am someone prone to nausea in VR too, but I’ve never felt this in any other mobile game before. I think it’s probably the amount of motion (hilly topography) and the very narrow field of view, along with the way the mobile controls behave. This was on iOS Safari btw (iPhone 16 Pro Max).
dgoldstein0
One thing I found is the field of view is much better in landscape orientation on my phone than portrait. Still a little small but not nearly as bad.
TeMPOraL
It's perfect on the almost square-ish main screen of a foldable.
In fact, it's the best looking game experience on a foldable I've seen so far (most games are designed for either mobile or tablet form factor, and can't quite handle the in-between). And it's cool how you can just fold or unfold the device on the fly, and the game just adapts without anything more noticeable than the camera pivoting a bit if needed to keep the character on-screen. No stutter, no half-second pause for UI to realign, not even perspective change.
EDIT: I just realized it's probably not a mobile-specific thing, and sure enough, on a desktop you can just resize your browser window to see this.
lobsterthief
Yes it is just correctly responding to window resize and device rotation events
Very good implementation for sure
snerbles
Got a little nauseous playing it on desktop. Needs an FOV slider and maybe the ability to dampen camera movement.
samplifier
A bit nauseous on mobile here too. I think it was mainly due to low frame rates and the controls not quite doing that I was expecting them to do.
singpolyma3
Yes I had to take a break due to the game making me feel off, but then I came back later and managed to finish it
stevage
I am completely blown away by this.
As a web developer who doesn't make games...I'm a bit overwhelmed by the vast knowledge gap that clearly exists between what I know and what would be required to make this.
Wow. It's so beautiful and enjoyable to wander about in.
dsq
There is something humbling seeing great work.
Jotalea
I spent more time enjoying the graphics and style than actually playing. it runs so well on a mobile device, I've never seen something like this.
as for the game itself, I couldn't understand how to deliver the messages.
tapia
I was very surprised that it worked perfectly in my 10-year old notebook. Normally, nothing this fancy is playable in a web browser for me. The CPU was about 20% (I only have two cores, 4 threads).
keanebean86
I have a cheap android phone that's 4 years old. This game is still playable. Very impressive!
MattRix
The “messages” stuff is a bit confusing, but really they’re just simple quests. You don’t start with the mail on you, but all you have to do is wander around and find quest givers who will tell you what to do.
HardwareLust
Thank you, I thought it was just me .
mountainriver
Reminds me of Jet Set Radio
Brainfood
@thecupisblue. Amazing work. Logged in just to tell you this. This has just given me goose bumps and made me excited about the web again. I’ve been struggling to find my groove in the dev world post AI and have been digging back into AR and WebXR just for the fun of it. Thank you for the game and more importantly the renewed inspiration to make something cool!
jimmySixDOF
WebXR is massively underrated
geuis
Love all of it except for the camera controls on iOS. Not sure how you could improve them but they need some work. Camera gets too close to the character a lot. Might consider two touch controls that separate movement direction and camera position.
xixixao
Agreed. Same for movement. It’s a little too hard to run straight sometimes.
tuanalumi
Yes. Camera work needs some improvements.
johnsillings
would be fixed by adding controls - probably q and e - to turn the camera left and right and pivot the character
kouru225
Too sensitive on the turning
gettingoverit
Loved the artstyle, but controls... uhh... let's say they were on par with a bad PC port of Sonic Adventure. I can barely control where I'm going, because the camera just rotates randomly. Something I'll never miss from the old days.
bob1029
The controls are the only gripe I have with this amazing work.
If I was in Unity, I would address this issue by manually placing a bunch of virtual cameras in the world and using cinemachine to blend between them. The size of this world is small enough to justify manual placement and configuration of each. You could also just focus on the complex areas and let the default follow cam handle the rest.
thaumasiotes
This really wants to be controlled by twin thumbsticks.
lavela
..or mouse for camera.
But I kind of understand it. I did a somehow similar project before and for people who are not trained in video game style controls it is quite hard to get used to them ad-hoc.
Assuming this project is at least partially aimed at art directors, project leads and such aka people who aren't necessarily gamers, detached movement/camera controls are a bit risky.
araes
The mouse look was actually something I was kind of wanting wandering around.
There were a lot of cool scenic locations, that almost beg for the ability to just stand somewhere and look around, yet you can't really look down or up very conveniently.
Also, walking locations where you might fall, be kind of nice to be able to look at where you're aiming at. Minor nit mostly, just fit the explore a scenic island theme.
undefined
ComputerGuru
Great job, Vicente and Michael!
* I love the writing, it's witty and poignant
* I was impressed that WASD controls worked with my keyboard set to Dvorak :)
* Unfortunately have to second the comments about nausea; the oddly paced camera (it feels like it is panning through molasses then suddenly accelerates to switch views) is probably responsible, I'm guessing the "overshoot view then correct" "feature" is also a factor. Additionally seconding the comments about allowing the camera to follow the mouse (if feasible somehow while not losing cross-form-factor support) would go a long way to help here as well.
* The font that shows you where you are is cute in an orientalist sense, but imho it is very difficult to read (even knowing what it says from context clues and previous hints)
* Not a criticism but it is odd to have jumping when there is no mechanism that uses it in-game
* 99.99% a me problem: I had a hard time with spatial awareness and a difficulty building a mental map of the world and my best guess is that it's because I personally found the default field of view to be too "zoomed in".
Tepix
> 99.99% a me problem: I had a hard time with spatial awareness and a difficulty building a mental map of the world and my best guess is that it's because I personally found the default field of view to be too "zoomed in".
Agreed on the spatial awareness issue. I think games like Mario Galaxy are a bit better in that regard because you see more of the world at a time. In this game you can sometimes not see what's 5m in front of you.
tetris11
esjeon
An interesting contradiction is that, in Summer Afternoon, you are in a wide empty town, but, in Messenger, you're stuck in a small planet AND limited vision. You can only see near-by stuffs and never the whole town.
The design of the latter allows packing more details in a smaller space. Also, players are forced to face a lot of unexpectedness, as navigation becomes a natural challenge (which isn't difficult to overcome, which is exactly the point). It's like the blind men and the elephant, and can feel very limited, but you end up using your brain, and, in that process, you fully embrace the world details.
5-
well spotted! seems to be the case: https://x.com/vlucendo/status/1971219342231732516
tetris11
I noticed the movement UI style was the same
Rygian
The alien sunbathing at the beach is a nice wink.
V__
I remember that. What a talent.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
The font? The art style? The fluidity on a mobile device? It's fantastic.
I wasn't able to deliver packages but I was too mesmerized to be mad about that. Beautiful game. Kudos.
Edit: I did figure it out and completed all the deliveries. So many potential. It reminds me a bit of Sky by thatgamecompany
Edit 2: for the author, I noticed several players approached me and tried to communicate. Please explore games like Journey (thatgamecompany) to see different ways people communicate without chatting. People can help each other, veterans can guide newbies all without using words. Every time I met a player in the game back in the days, they sent me a heartfelt message.