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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Hearthstone (while not web-based) is a deck building game that you play against others and you can only communicate with a small set of inoffensive phrases that cover broad sentiments. Makes multiplayer endurable, and you can turn them off if you like.
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.
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.
The iPhone wins on boost shader throughput by a lot, but that’ll throttle. The ps4 has more, slower gpu cores. Not sure how gpu memory bandwidth compares.
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.
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.
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.
> ....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.
The game doesn't really explain that too well. You have to go find the packages first before you can deliver it. For example the old lady asks you to deliver an offering at a temple.
Teaching gameplay without an overt tutorial is a difficult skill, maybe this dev can pull it off? It's hard to get into the "new player" headspace without feedback from actual playtesters.
After clicking through the first popups with the player's inner monologue, I fully expected some help text like "Use W S A D to move" to pop up.
I had no real reason for that expectation, except this is how several games I played in recent years handled it - which made me realize now, that explaining gameplay to new players is something that's actively evolving. There may not be a rulebook, but there are clear trends.
He did not pull it off. You can't click on things, there are no "you can't do this yet" signs if you get to the temple without a package, there is no "following your nose at the start leads to your first quest". Utterly inscrutable.
That's part of the charm, in my opinion. It encourages just trying things out and learning on the fly. With such low stakes, I think it was a great way to go.
The font is really awful. Misunderstanding aesthetics from difference cultural sources to feed to people who will take them at a surface level, there's nothing of substance. It's giving [0] and it's bad vibes, nothing should aspire to this. It leads me to question every other emotional connection I might otherwise have with the experience.
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:
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:
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.
Ok, thanks. Firefox, Windows was what was tried. Seems to have issues. Try Chrome and see if it works better. EDIT: Yep, works on Chrome, Windows. Must be a Firefox specific issue / feature not supported.
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.
- 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.
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).
We all build on top of something. Today’s browser will look like a native platform in another 20 years. Just like assembly does to our point of view today.
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..
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.
I would love to play that! I love the idea of the Playdate but with a Switch that is gathering dust, I don't think I can convince my wife to let me get another handheld :')
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
@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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is some level of mouse look. I suspect together with not locking the cursor/the cursor leaving the window, this is part of why people report issues.
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.
* 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".
> 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.
It's really unique and beautiful. I want to see more of this. I grew up with random interactive experiences in Flash, this is far more amazing that those days but we need more of this and less of the form crud crap.
I don't play games. I clicked the link and played through the entire game. With a little work you could turn this into a modern Myst-type game, with a compelling story and atmosphere and mysteries/puzzles. I think this would be really fantastic.
I meant only video games. I’m not a robot or an NPC lol. I don’t have the attention span for most, and I spend too much time already looking at screens.
The one thing that transported me out of the game was the arbitrary blocking around the ocean / the end of the stream. (I assume those go to the same place, from different sides.)
It seems on such a tiny world the water should never be more than waist deep, so why not just let us explore the whole thing. I didn't quite feel like I got to go all the way around the tiny world, and being fenced by an invisible barrier broke the fourth wall.
The camera, controls, and difficult to discern invisible walls were frustrating to the point I had to just quit the game, even after completing over half of the deliveries. On Safari on macOS there is also a glitch where the character’s clothes keep changing, and I can’t see any other players there (it was only when I tried it on iOS that I realised this is Journey-like).
But the game is beautiful and peaceful and I’m still glad I got to experience it. I’ll definitely share it with some friends. Thank you for making it.
I'm curious how you build something like this. I see file types in the network tab which, as a web dev, I've never worked with before. ktx2 and drc extensions, for example. I'm also seeing some wasm and threejs. Is there an engine that outputs these things or is it more of a manual process to bring everything together?
Having done some non-trivial things with threejs, I'd guess it's basically like this: 3JS is the rendering engine (taking advantage of WebGL); game logic is in Javascript; ktx2 is an OpenGL container holding the world data and other meshes; from looking at the filenames, WASM bits are used for loading the ktx2 data (draco_decoder.wasm). ogg files are for sound. The multiple worker files imply that the app is using web workers to run the WASM performantly to load the world.
ktx is Khronos Texture a format for storing compressed textures (=image data) so that they can be uploaded to GPU memory without decompressing step inbetween
drc is Draco Compression, it's a library from Google to compress mesh data
KTX can just store compressed GPU textures as-is, but in this case they're using the Basis Universal codec which is a bit more involved. Basis stores textures in a super-compressed form, which is decompressed at runtime to produce a less compressed (but still compressed!) format that the GPU can work with. The advantage is that it's smaller over the wire and one source file can decompress to several different GPU formats depending on what the users hardware supports.
Am sitting at a game jam right now and took a break to browse HN. Found this and started playing for a bit. Now everyone is asking about it, this is a really polished and fun WebGL game. Amazing!
It could use a tutorial but this is probably the first time that I didn't care about the actual aim of the game because of how beautifully it looks and sounds. I could just run around in your little world forever and feel nice. It's really well done.
* there should be a help section, all i could figure out is how to walk with up/left/down/right, and w/a/s/d. And the mouse.
* I got nauseous after a bit, not sure if that is everyone or just me but I did have some bad nausea on a ride (teacups) at the local carnival/fair a few months ago, and it comes back every now and then.
* the controls on desktop seem too sensitive. I had to eventually walk with W and then go left and right with the arrow keys, but even then it was too sensitive
I also got nausea from this game and I've never gotten nausea from a video game before. The style is amazing, but the camera controls need some work. I don't know what the camera needs besides a more standard mouse control.
same. sensitivity of the camera is just too high. it handles ok but so much sensitivity creates this motion sickness. had to quit after 30 seconds and I still can’t recover. but beautiful game though!
I appreciate what seems like an attempt to make a "smart camera" that gets out of the way of the player and unburdens them from having to control both a player and the perspective of the camera. That burden, of controlling two entities (player and camera) is large for people who are unused to playing video games.
Was this dynamic on your radar when building the game and camera system? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Modern camera systems are often smart in this way. Zelda Ocarina of Time on the N64 was one of the first (if not the first) that got "out of the way" by itself.
Did anyone else felt a bit nauseous after playing for a while? I think the overcorrection on sustained turns could be a reason. Lovely game but I had to stop playing due to this.
Beautiful. You can just tell when things are made with the core premise of how they wanted someone to FEEL playing it. Not some lore, not some "cool" gameplay ideas they had, not some fancy gfx concept they'd prototyped. It just feels different when you know it's been approached from a completely emotional perspective.
ive read some criticisms of fiddly movement and lack of tutorials. i thought it added to the experience. tbf i am on my laptop
the stakes are so low, the music is so relaxing, and the environment is so detailed and pretty that it pushes the player slow down and try clicking around and pressing some keys. each little discovery feels great and theres no downside to sitting around and trying things out for 30 seconds
my favorite part is that there is some tough platforming if you look for it. i make it to a few places that were only accessible with a running jump across a balanced ledge. the fiddly controls added to the experience. a splash of emergent game play in such a distilled hangout game
Huh, I played on mobile and move and jump were exclusive afaict in the touch controls. I climbed up a fire escape and almost got on top of a building but couldn't make the last step to get up there. Maybe I'll have to try on desktop.
This is beautiful. Like others, I don't really play video games, but walking around and appreciating the visual style is just so comforting and compelling. Incredible work.
Awesome game, the graphics especially were nicely made. The cel shading (iirc) went well with the art style.
Played through all missions and at the end had enough of the concept but appreciated the AOD. Especially the little bits of the environment, like the sleeping fox in the forest, were nice.
Agreed with everything said here about the beauty. I found the camera controls pretty clumsy though. I played in portrait, landscape probably would work better.
One thing I really like about the graphics: the black "comic book" outlines have lots of gaps, which gives the game an imperfect, hand drawn look which other cel shaded games lack.
Pretty damn cool experience. Definitely the most polished browser game I've tried. The limited scope really makes it fantastic and since it's such a small vertical slice the world feels very full of detail. The art style is fantastic as well.
I love the art style, and it plays super smoothly on mobile! No tutorial, but the controls are so intuitive that I didn't need one (joystick touch control that's in almost every 3D mobile game). The sense of exploration and discovery is pretty fun.
I found movement controls rotated too aggressively on mobile in portrait mode. Switching my phone to landscape orientation made it easier to control, but the url bar was then stuck along the top.
I started dabbling in web game design as a fun project when all the LLM assisted tools came out because the friction in not knowing threejs and JavaScript was mostly gone.
I built a small sailing game called vibesail.com that works on the browser for free.
This project with this tiny planet is amazing. So well designed, such a nice cute little world. Makes me want to cry.
Idea for letting the player move the camera alone: Top 1/3 portion of the screen is for camera movement alone, bottom 2/3 keep as is for player movement
Really impressed by this. The art style is fantastic, and you've done a spectacular job making everything feel cozy despite being wrapped around such a tiny sphere. The number of distinct locations is absolutely incredible.
Keyboard controls were a tad frustrating, but hell of a job overall.
I really liked the chill vibe and it ran surprisingly well for a 3D browser game. Are there any "secrets" besides the alien, space ship and the girl on the roof who talks about Three.js?
This game is absolutely beautiful. Everytime I restart learning WebGL I dream of making small little experiences like this but I never seem to get past "box in a scene with lightning"-phase.
Wow. This is gorgeous. Chef's kiss. It's been so long since I've seen someone put this much effort into a web-based indie game (or even an app store indie game, actually). I am assuming this is a small team. The concept is really clever and original. There's almost no load time and a perfect frame rate on a low-end phone over 4G. It's clear how much time went into optimizing it for seamless performance. I'm making some assumption that this is an original one-off game engine, but I'm very curious to investigate. The art is also beautiful in a way that makes almost any view look perfect.
This feels so well thought out in all ways. It may be the best original work I've seen on HN in a long time.
not likely to be your problem, but if you are using firefox resist fingerprinting, you need to whitelist most webgl apps that use large textures, since resist fingerprinting forces a standard texture size that is a bit on the small side. or maybe your machine is really old and you're hitting same problem for real. the game doesn't really detect errors.
Thanks for sharing that information. Fonts were not being rendered without adding an exemption. Instructions for future reference if resist fingerprinting is on: in about:config modify privacy.resistFingerprinting.exemptedDomains and add messenger.abeto.co/. Example: .example.invalid,*messenger.abeto.co/
Obligatory disclaimer that fingerprinting is then possible for that site and one's privacy could be compromised. Use at your own risk and all that.
It is lovely overall.
I just think the camera is almost too close for the character. It could be just a little tad farther so I could control it better when playing on my phone
This is beautiful, and works well on mobile in many ways.
I’m not unfortunately a fan of the way the touch controls work. Given the player is on a tiny spherical world I’d expected to be able to drag the world around under their feet to make them walk/run, whereas the way it works at the moment, on a smallish phone screen, feels somewhat backwards.
This is stunning, and I adore it. I had an idea to build a game set on a tiny planet but I never even started, and here you have created something that's awe-inspiring. keep it up!
Graphically the game looks great, this is the kind of stuff that Web 3D needs, given the difference on OpenGL ES offerings on native mobile games and what most stuff looks like.
However I gave up playing on mobile, the system randomly mixes fingers movement between moving the character and zooming, thus breaking any gaming experience, I guess it was mainly tested on desktop.
I think you have mistaken the camera zooming to avoid clipping with the environment with your fingers controlling the zoom. Unless there is some secret zoom gesture I'm missing.
Finally found it. In the Main Square you go down that side street where the guy is standing next to his scooter. Then you turn left through the gate and there is a little rocky outcropping there where the temple is.
It took me a while, but it's there. There's an owl-looking rock in the side of a mountain. To the right of it you can fall all the way down to the beach with the guy on the lounger directly below (but getting back up is a bit roundabout). Once you find the owl-looking rock you're very close to the person at the top where you need to deliver the message.
Love the design and concept of a tiny planet - reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy in that way. Definitely needs a tutorial or a short “How to Play” dialog or page.
Second this. Pretty much standard/intuitive controls, it was fun discovering what the game was about while captivated by the beautiful music and graphics.
What an inspirational work of art. Thanks for making this and sharing it.
I've only played a few minutes (will have to revisit with more time). On first impression, the art style / characters / dynamics feel like a mix of "Little Kitty, Big City" and "Olli Olli World". Really great vibes!
Everyone is celebrating and praising this beautiful and well-crafted game, and here I am maliciously thinking that if this game were to come to Steam, some evil curator would say “Not recommended” followed by a nonsensical and absurd explanation.
Super nice game. Anyway, I hit a border where the stream of water ends. Has someone checked the topology? It's a sphere or just a rectagle with an impossible curvature in both directions?
Absolutely love this. The art is gorgeous and it runs beautifully on mobile. But the best part is the silent communication with other players—jumping around and using emojis really captures that magical feeling from games like Journey. Brilliant design.
After listening to a certain science fiction podcast and playing through a certain space puzzle game, I think I've got a bit of a soft spot for tiny worlds, especially a world this charming! Good work
Again, the proof that music and sound is 50% of success of a game. Even if the game flops the OST will live on. I always invest time in music and sound as much as possible.
Was having fun. Completed all but the scientist objective as I couldn't find the last person. I found what looked to be a hidden location and as the person there said "Hello" it crashed the page. oof.
Happy to find out it remembered my progress. And I found the final delivery and completed the game. And yes, I'm sure the girl on the roof is a 'hidden' thing. She talks about three.js, game development, and art.
I'm a recovering completionist. Don't do this to me! I've been trying to find a secret area by walking on the pipes but that is probably a red herring. But why is there a gauge there? I also haven't found the girl on the roof yet, multi-wall jumping doesn't seem to work :)
SPOILERS AHEAD (for another game, which you should have played by now, if you enjoy this game, in my opinion) There's also a hiss at the industrial site which reminds me of the game Full Throttle where you have to kick the wall at the right time. But that can't be a thing, right? But the gauge!
In one of the alleys there a trash can with one open lid and a small box on the ground next to it/ You notice an exterior stair just above teh trash can. You hop on the box, then the closed side of the trash, then the open, then the stairs. I'll leave the rest of the puzzle for you to figure out. You want to make it to the top of the building.
Thanks! That was fun. I think I got on top of most things with some glitch exploiting save for the green water tower next to the secret person. I got to the UFO but it didn't trigger a secret sequence with the sunbathing space-person. I also got into the sewer pipe but I didn't find any more secrets there. Maybe we need to combine our powers and do the secret emoji sequence. Or maybe spin the sigils in the title sequence to enable cheat mode. :-)
I'm not sure if they are real people. I started two sessions and I didn't see my other self, despite being in the same location. Also, both times, the starting place was the same. If that would be the case for everyone, there would be many people there who just start the game.
Besides the visual style being very similar, there's an island in the game with about the same amount of NPCs, and they all have their own lives and many give you chores like this one.
Decentraleyes extension on Firefox results in garbled text. Not sure why this happens. It is supposed to serve some common assets locally instead of requesting them over the network.
this is the most cute, beautiful shit i've seen all year. i love the fact that there are other players everywhere, since it's so convenient to dive into it via browser.
yes, thanks! i was unsure whether to include it because it looks quite different. but you are right, it has the similar exploratory vibe and is a great game.
'cause most people would not be able to read it and would relegate the game/site/project/... as something tailored to the 130 million (or thereabouts) of more than 8 billion people who do read Japanese and most likely sideline it.
The guy in the cave having the midlife crisis and his wife sending him clothes had me in tears. The lost kid in the woods who can hear his dad. The lack of any meaningful gratitude... he just seemed so checked out. I felt so jealous of his wife who still cared. Who kept saying tulips take time.
Not even a complicated storyline but very poignant.
You can see it looking out from the cliff next to the red house on the hill. But I couldn’t actually get to the UFO, I tried going all around the other hill it is on top of but I am not sure if it is accessible.
The alien is lounging on the beach. You actually can get to the UFO (you can also see it in the preview before you hit "begin"). Cross the wooden bridge by the red cliff house, then turn right to face the stilts holding up the house. Walk a few meters towards the water but don't walk into the water. Follow the waterline on your right, towards a tree. Pass the tree to where you'll find a "path" spiraling up and to the left around a larger rock. You'll have to make a few jumps to wind your way up the rock, then you'll be at the UFO
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.
> 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.
--
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45403407
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.
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.
That's why I suggested other means of communication other than chat.
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!
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.
Hearthstone (while not web-based) is a deck building game that you play against others and you can only communicate with a small set of inoffensive phrases that cover broad sentiments. Makes multiplayer endurable, and you can turn them off if you like.
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.
Reminds me of dancing with random strangers in "Playstaion Home" on the PS3
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.
You can communicate by sending emojis with the menu in the bottom right.
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.
You need to click on npc to start conversation, one of them is office worker, he will give you a delivery
I thought it could be operated entirely from the keyboard, thanks for the tip on clicking! lol
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.
Don’t neglect that 2020+ mobile chips are better at graphics than PlayStation 4.
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.
The CPU on the iPhone 13 mini (apple’s last phone, in my opinion) wins:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-sony_playstation_5...
Shader throughput (shader count times base clock) is similar too: https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-a15-bionic-vs-amd-l...
The iPhone wins on boost shader throughput by a lot, but that’ll throttle. The ps4 has more, slower gpu cores. Not sure how gpu memory bandwidth compares.
Even if it is only true in theory, it is still amazing to know.
I did not know that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks
> ....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.
exactly, realy well made!
If you want to play as the only player, use Safari on the Mac. The downside is, your clothes are constantly changing.
I do not play video games, but I played this one through till the end and wish there was more to explore.
I played for a few minutes. I wasn't able to deliver packages either.
The game doesn't really explain that too well. You have to go find the packages first before you can deliver it. For example the old lady asks you to deliver an offering at a temple.
Teaching gameplay without an overt tutorial is a difficult skill, maybe this dev can pull it off? It's hard to get into the "new player" headspace without feedback from actual playtesters.
After clicking through the first popups with the player's inner monologue, I fully expected some help text like "Use W S A D to move" to pop up.
I had no real reason for that expectation, except this is how several games I played in recent years handled it - which made me realize now, that explaining gameplay to new players is something that's actively evolving. There may not be a rulebook, but there are clear trends.
He did not pull it off. You can't click on things, there are no "you can't do this yet" signs if you get to the temple without a package, there is no "following your nose at the start leads to your first quest". Utterly inscrutable.
That's part of the charm, in my opinion. It encourages just trying things out and learning on the fly. With such low stakes, I think it was a great way to go.
If you find a guy in a cave, you're on to your first delivery.
The font is really awful. Misunderstanding aesthetics from difference cultural sources to feed to people who will take them at a surface level, there's nothing of substance. It's giving [0] and it's bad vibes, nothing should aspire to this. It leads me to question every other emotional connection I might otherwise have with the experience.
[0] https://i.redd.it/jv2yw7uqmu3e1.png
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://vlucendo.com/
https://x.com/michaelsungaila (nice work on the beach shader!)
https://www.kevincolombin.com/ (music)
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.
https://summer-afternoon.vlucendo.com/
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?
Still plays fine for me. (Chrome, macOS.)
Ok, thanks. Firefox, Windows was what was tried. Seems to have issues. Try Chrome and see if it works better. EDIT: Yep, works on Chrome, Windows. Must be a Firefox specific issue / feature not supported.
I made a reply asking if anyone has some behind the scenes information on making games like this! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for this post, excellent
what was the approach for the cell shading look do you know?
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.
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.
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.
First you make the money, then hire someone else to port it to native. That’s what Vampire Survivors did.
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.
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.
> 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?
Can always use Electron or Tauri to turn it into a native app
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).
We all build on top of something. Today’s browser will look like a native platform in another 20 years. Just like assembly does to our point of view today.
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..
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
> https://xcancel.com/michaelsungaila
> https://kevincolombin.bandcamp.com/
Return of the Obra Dinn!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/653530/Return_of_the_Obra...
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papers,_Please
Also if you have the delightful "Playdate" game console, his game Mars After Midnight is charming and not stressful.
I would love to play that! I love the idea of the Playdate but with a Switch that is gathering dust, I don't think I can convince my wife to let me get another handheld :')
There's also an article on another game by the same folks that's similar (but earlier) which describes some details on building it
https://www.awwwards.com/summer-afternoon.html
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Got a little nauseous playing it on desktop. Needs an FOV slider and maybe the ability to dampen camera movement.
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
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.
There is something humbling seeing great work.
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.
I have a cheap android phone that's 4 years old. This game is still playable. Very impressive!
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).
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.
Thank you, I thought it was just me .
Reminds me of Jet Set Radio
@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!
WebXR is massively underrated
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.
Agreed. Same for movement. It’s a little too hard to run straight sometimes.
would be fixed by adding controls - probably q and e - to turn the camera left and right and pivot the character
Too sensitive on the turning
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.
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.
This really wants to be controlled by twin thumbsticks.
..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.
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.
There is some level of mouse look. I suspect together with not locking the cursor/the cursor leaving the window, this is part of why people report issues.
Woah, is this the same author as
https://summer-afternoon.vlucendo.com
?
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.
Love the beach guy makes an appearance in both.
The flying saucer is also there too :)
well spotted! seems to be the case: https://x.com/vlucendo/status/1971219342231732516
I noticed the movement UI style was the same
The alien sunbathing at the beach is a nice wink.
I remember that. What a talent.
controlling movement is much easier. Something is wrong with the movement in the OP game, at least on a browers
Feels about the same to me, I think the map is just more open on this one so the camera is less likely to be pointed somewhere annoying.
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".
> 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.
I think people are confused that they have to deliver packages they already possess. Instead the instructions should read…
“Explore and Make Deliveries”
It's really unique and beautiful. I want to see more of this. I grew up with random interactive experiences in Flash, this is far more amazing that those days but we need more of this and less of the form crud crap.
„Wow, I got promoted? Who would have thought that acting on my lowest instincts would bring me advancement in the corporate world!“
Clever text as well :)
I don't play games. I clicked the link and played through the entire game. With a little work you could turn this into a modern Myst-type game, with a compelling story and atmosphere and mysteries/puzzles. I think this would be really fantastic.
> I don't play games.
Like ever? Are you talking about any sort of game or you mean strictly "video games"?
I meant only video games. I’m not a robot or an NPC lol. I don’t have the attention span for most, and I spend too much time already looking at screens.
Beautiful, as others have said.
The one thing that transported me out of the game was the arbitrary blocking around the ocean / the end of the stream. (I assume those go to the same place, from different sides.)
It seems on such a tiny world the water should never be more than waist deep, so why not just let us explore the whole thing. I didn't quite feel like I got to go all the way around the tiny world, and being fenced by an invisible barrier broke the fourth wall.
Really beautiful! Love the artwork and the fact that this runs so well in the browser. Was surprised to realize it was multiplayer!
The camera, controls, and difficult to discern invisible walls were frustrating to the point I had to just quit the game, even after completing over half of the deliveries. On Safari on macOS there is also a glitch where the character’s clothes keep changing, and I can’t see any other players there (it was only when I tried it on iOS that I realised this is Journey-like).
But the game is beautiful and peaceful and I’m still glad I got to experience it. I’ll definitely share it with some friends. Thank you for making it.
Also visit their main site: https://abeto.co/ . The animation is mind-blowing.
It's not obvious how to access any content on that page? The animation is cool though.
I think the content is the animation (and the contact link)
You can also interact with the stuff moving around using the mouse pointer.
I'm curious how you build something like this. I see file types in the network tab which, as a web dev, I've never worked with before. ktx2 and drc extensions, for example. I'm also seeing some wasm and threejs. Is there an engine that outputs these things or is it more of a manual process to bring everything together?
Having done some non-trivial things with threejs, I'd guess it's basically like this: 3JS is the rendering engine (taking advantage of WebGL); game logic is in Javascript; ktx2 is an OpenGL container holding the world data and other meshes; from looking at the filenames, WASM bits are used for loading the ktx2 data (draco_decoder.wasm). ogg files are for sound. The multiple worker files imply that the app is using web workers to run the WASM performantly to load the world.
ktx is Khronos Texture a format for storing compressed textures (=image data) so that they can be uploaded to GPU memory without decompressing step inbetween
drc is Draco Compression, it's a library from Google to compress mesh data
KTX can just store compressed GPU textures as-is, but in this case they're using the Basis Universal codec which is a bit more involved. Basis stores textures in a super-compressed form, which is decompressed at runtime to produce a less compressed (but still compressed!) format that the GPU can work with. The advantage is that it's smaller over the wire and one source file can decompress to several different GPU formats depending on what the users hardware supports.
ktx2 = textures
drc = 3d shapes (I think)
ogg = audio
All of these would normally be bundled in the game installer, but are sent down piece by piece over the network in this case.
Then there's some wasm and js for the game's business logic. The browser has WebGL APIs that enable running all of this.
I'm assuming they used a library or engine like Unity, Godot or Three.js that supports WebGL as an execution target.
The NPC at the top of the building sais it's three.js
Definitely Three.js or at least something similarly low-level. I doubt you can get this kind of performance with Godot or Unity on the web.
There is Needle.Tools for porting Unity projects to WebGL/3js
Threejs is like the jQuery for building 3d stuff. But it's not a platform like Unity or Unreal engine. But it doesn't look overly complicated.
Am sitting at a game jam right now and took a break to browse HN. Found this and started playing for a bit. Now everyone is asking about it, this is a really polished and fun WebGL game. Amazing!
It could use a tutorial but this is probably the first time that I didn't care about the actual aim of the game because of how beautifully it looks and sounds. I could just run around in your little world forever and feel nice. It's really well done.
has a lot of potential
feedback after 5m
* there should be a help section, all i could figure out is how to walk with up/left/down/right, and w/a/s/d. And the mouse. * I got nauseous after a bit, not sure if that is everyone or just me but I did have some bad nausea on a ride (teacups) at the local carnival/fair a few months ago, and it comes back every now and then. * the controls on desktop seem too sensitive. I had to eventually walk with W and then go left and right with the arrow keys, but even then it was too sensitive
I left after 5m because of the nausea.
I liked the music and peacefulness.
I also got nausea from this game and I've never gotten nausea from a video game before. The style is amazing, but the camera controls need some work. I don't know what the camera needs besides a more standard mouse control.
same. sensitivity of the camera is just too high. it handles ok but so much sensitivity creates this motion sickness. had to quit after 30 seconds and I still can’t recover. but beautiful game though!
camera control is non existant, you just go and game chooses what you see. let me control the camera please
Yeah, I also got motion sickness from the camera! I managed to complete as I really liked everything else but I'm still a bit nauseated.
This is the loveliest thing I've ever seen on the web. The feeling of being immediately immersed in a universe. A work of art.
How do you solve the second mission (the man that is hiding somewhere)? I've managed to find even the three.js mention, but nothing to start that one.
He's in a cave near the forest. Turn right when you see the tree stump with the owl on it.
I appreciate what seems like an attempt to make a "smart camera" that gets out of the way of the player and unburdens them from having to control both a player and the perspective of the camera. That burden, of controlling two entities (player and camera) is large for people who are unused to playing video games.
Was this dynamic on your radar when building the game and camera system? Would love to hear your thoughts.
I'd rather have the choice to control the camera (the "smart" camera could be used only if I don't control it), because it didn't work well for me.
Nice game otherwise.
Modern camera systems are often smart in this way. Zelda Ocarina of Time on the N64 was one of the first (if not the first) that got "out of the way" by itself.
Did anyone else felt a bit nauseous after playing for a while? I think the overcorrection on sustained turns could be a reason. Lovely game but I had to stop playing due to this.
It took me about 30 seconds. Which is a shame, this is the kind of game that immediately draws me in.
Beautiful. You can just tell when things are made with the core premise of how they wanted someone to FEEL playing it. Not some lore, not some "cool" gameplay ideas they had, not some fancy gfx concept they'd prototyped. It just feels different when you know it's been approached from a completely emotional perspective.
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ive read some criticisms of fiddly movement and lack of tutorials. i thought it added to the experience. tbf i am on my laptop
the stakes are so low, the music is so relaxing, and the environment is so detailed and pretty that it pushes the player slow down and try clicking around and pressing some keys. each little discovery feels great and theres no downside to sitting around and trying things out for 30 seconds
my favorite part is that there is some tough platforming if you look for it. i make it to a few places that were only accessible with a running jump across a balanced ledge. the fiddly controls added to the experience. a splash of emergent game play in such a distilled hangout game
Huh, I played on mobile and move and jump were exclusive afaict in the touch controls. I climbed up a fire escape and almost got on top of a building but couldn't make the last step to get up there. Maybe I'll have to try on desktop.
This is beautiful. Like others, I don't really play video games, but walking around and appreciating the visual style is just so comforting and compelling. Incredible work.
This is absolutely adorable. I love the art style and the vibe. I love the tiny planet concept. Great work.
Awesome game, the graphics especially were nicely made. The cel shading (iirc) went well with the art style.
Played through all missions and at the end had enough of the concept but appreciated the AOD. Especially the little bits of the environment, like the sleeping fox in the forest, were nice.
Agreed with everything said here about the beauty. I found the camera controls pretty clumsy though. I played in portrait, landscape probably would work better.
Yeah the camera's horrible. I found myself snaking left and right just trying to walk in a straight line.
Isn't this how camera in these games always used to work? You have to nudge your character to control it.
Took me way to long too realize the other in-world delivery people were other players and not NPCs
One thing I really like about the graphics: the black "comic book" outlines have lots of gaps, which gives the game an imperfect, hand drawn look which other cel shaded games lack.
Pretty damn cool experience. Definitely the most polished browser game I've tried. The limited scope really makes it fantastic and since it's such a small vertical slice the world feels very full of detail. The art style is fantastic as well.
It took me longer than I’d care to admit to realize it was a font of readable text and not just random glyphs. I like the style of them.
Absolutely stunning experience. The way the houses rolled over the hill as I walked. Incredible.
I love the art style, and it plays super smoothly on mobile! No tutorial, but the controls are so intuitive that I didn't need one (joystick touch control that's in almost every 3D mobile game). The sense of exploration and discovery is pretty fun.
I found movement controls rotated too aggressively on mobile in portrait mode. Switching my phone to landscape orientation made it easier to control, but the url bar was then stuck along the top.
I started dabbling in web game design as a fun project when all the LLM assisted tools came out because the friction in not knowing threejs and JavaScript was mostly gone. I built a small sailing game called vibesail.com that works on the browser for free.
This project with this tiny planet is amazing. So well designed, such a nice cute little world. Makes me want to cry.
I am so far away...
This is beautiful, kudos. I'm more than interested to read about the building process of this masterpiece.
It will be nice to know more about how this was made.
The creator's web site says nothing:
https://abeto.co/
Their Twitter has three posts:
https://xcancel.com/abeto_co
Three of the people behind it:
https://xcancel.com/vlucendo
https://xcancel.com/michaelsungaila
https://kevincolombin.bandcamp.com/
It say nothing but boy what a beautiful website
Idea for letting the player move the camera alone: Top 1/3 portion of the screen is for camera movement alone, bottom 2/3 keep as is for player movement
Amazing.
Its got a Zelda Wind Walker vibe that I love. It was fun just running around exploring.
I feel like a thief playing this for free. This is leagues better than most mobile "games", and actually online too!
Beautiful. Plays super smoothly on Firefox with NoScript, uBlock Origin and many other privacy extensions. But it lacks a player tutorial IMHO.
So does life. Just jump on in, try your best, make some discoveries, and have fun
In other words: it's the journey not the destination.
Really impressed by this. The art style is fantastic, and you've done a spectacular job making everything feel cozy despite being wrapped around such a tiny sphere. The number of distinct locations is absolutely incredible.
Keyboard controls were a tad frustrating, but hell of a job overall.
I really liked the chill vibe and it ran surprisingly well for a 3D browser game. Are there any "secrets" besides the alien, space ship and the girl on the roof who talks about Three.js?
Beautiful design, but uncontrollable and unplayable. Edit: on a phone I'm constantly bumping into walls.
What? On desktop? Found it extremely easy to control...
This game is absolutely beautiful. Everytime I restart learning WebGL I dream of making small little experiences like this but I never seem to get past "box in a scene with lightning"-phase.
Anyone has any tips on building games like this?
When you finish the game you get the credits for who created it.
There's also a threejs reference in a hard to reach area.
Wow. This is gorgeous. Chef's kiss. It's been so long since I've seen someone put this much effort into a web-based indie game (or even an app store indie game, actually). I am assuming this is a small team. The concept is really clever and original. There's almost no load time and a perfect frame rate on a low-end phone over 4G. It's clear how much time went into optimizing it for seamless performance. I'm making some assumption that this is an original one-off game engine, but I'm very curious to investigate. The art is also beautiful in a way that makes almost any view look perfect.
This feels so well thought out in all ways. It may be the best original work I've seen on HN in a long time.
I got Hayao Miyazaki vibes about this game. Arigatou.
The boss reading the letter even looks like the guy.
Me too:)
Stuck at loading screen for a few minutes. Hugged by HN?
not likely to be your problem, but if you are using firefox resist fingerprinting, you need to whitelist most webgl apps that use large textures, since resist fingerprinting forces a standard texture size that is a bit on the small side. or maybe your machine is really old and you're hitting same problem for real. the game doesn't really detect errors.
Thanks for sharing that information. Fonts were not being rendered without adding an exemption. Instructions for future reference if resist fingerprinting is on: in about:config modify privacy.resistFingerprinting.exemptedDomains and add messenger.abeto.co/. Example: .example.invalid,*messenger.abeto.co/ Obligatory disclaimer that fingerprinting is then possible for that site and one's privacy could be compromised. Use at your own risk and all that.
Looks like nothing more than an animated GIF here as well.
shrug
Wow this looks amazing, but the camera made me very nauseous, I had to stop playing.
Amazing! I've never seen a game with this artstyle, really, really classy!
It is lovely overall. I just think the camera is almost too close for the character. It could be just a little tad farther so I could control it better when playing on my phone
This game is perfect. I've finished all the deliveries, and have found both the special visitor and their vehicle :)
Wish there were achievements for that!
It took me a while to realize you need to click on the word bubble with the ellipsis to begin the conversation
This is beautiful, and works well on mobile in many ways.
I’m not unfortunately a fan of the way the touch controls work. Given the player is on a tiny spherical world I’d expected to be able to drag the world around under their feet to make them walk/run, whereas the way it works at the moment, on a smallish phone screen, feels somewhat backwards.
This is stunning, and I adore it. I had an idea to build a game set on a tiny planet but I never even started, and here you have created something that's awe-inspiring. keep it up!
Great game. Had to quit as it's giving me motion sickness.
I just went through some thought stuff recently, so opening HN, of all things, and playing this jam relaxed my quite a bit. Thank you.
Graphically the game looks great, this is the kind of stuff that Web 3D needs, given the difference on OpenGL ES offerings on native mobile games and what most stuff looks like.
However I gave up playing on mobile, the system randomly mixes fingers movement between moving the character and zooming, thus breaking any gaming experience, I guess it was mainly tested on desktop.
I think you have mistaken the camera zooming to avoid clipping with the environment with your fingers controlling the zoom. Unless there is some secret zoom gesture I'm missing.
The game is the one mistaking it, all happens with single finger movement.
One second it is going forward, sundenly the next second zooms in.
Well perhaps you are experiencing a bug since mine only does that when there is an obstacle in the way of the camera.
Lovely game, it was over too soon!
The speech sound effects and environments reminded me of Stray a lot. I miss that game so much.
Gorgeous. Would love to know how they managed to create a reliably good-looking outline post processing shader with notches (the sketched look).
i can't find the mountain temple :(
Finally found it. In the Main Square you go down that side street where the guy is standing next to his scooter. Then you turn left through the gate and there is a little rocky outcropping there where the temple is.
It took me a while, but it's there. There's an owl-looking rock in the side of a mountain. To the right of it you can fall all the way down to the beach with the guy on the lounger directly below (but getting back up is a bit roundabout). Once you find the owl-looking rock you're very close to the person at the top where you need to deliver the message.
Me either XD I keep finding new places I haven't explored yet and getting distracted.
Neither can I. I feel stupid
same
Love the design and concept of a tiny planet - reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy in that way. Definitely needs a tutorial or a short “How to Play” dialog or page.
On the other hand, I'm so glad it didn't. I enjoyed a few minutes of exploration before realizing what I was meant to be doing.
Second this. Pretty much standard/intuitive controls, it was fun discovering what the game was about while captivated by the beautiful music and graphics.
Check out Outer Wilds if you like tiny planets! (Not to be confused with Outer Worlds)
This is incredible. Tiny startup time and client bundle. I'm very impressed a game this great can run so smoothly in the browser.
Beautiful. I got stuck in the corner behind Steve and game over - couldn't figure out how to navigate out, just kept triggering his dialog.
There's lots of spots where you can get stuck. Really needs a "reset position" option.
Yeah, I had to end the game due to getting stuck between the fencing on the sea side and the chemical plant columns.
What an inspirational work of art. Thanks for making this and sharing it.
I've only played a few minutes (will have to revisit with more time). On first impression, the art style / characters / dynamics feel like a mix of "Little Kitty, Big City" and "Olli Olli World". Really great vibes!
Everyone is celebrating and praising this beautiful and well-crafted game, and here I am maliciously thinking that if this game were to come to Steam, some evil curator would say “Not recommended” followed by a nonsensical and absurd explanation.
Well, the nausea could do that.
Just chiming in with more positivity: was pleasantly surprised how fast this loaded and ran on mobile. Impressive work.
Super nice game. Anyway, I hit a border where the stream of water ends. Has someone checked the topology? It's a sphere or just a rectagle with an impossible curvature in both directions?
This is so neat! Is there a debug mode where I could just fly around and examine the planet?
Absolutely love this. The art is gorgeous and it runs beautifully on mobile. But the best part is the silent communication with other players—jumping around and using emojis really captures that magical feeling from games like Journey. Brilliant design.
This is just wonderful
After listening to a certain science fiction podcast and playing through a certain space puzzle game, I think I've got a bit of a soft spot for tiny worlds, especially a world this charming! Good work
This is the most beautifully soothing thing I've seen all week. Thanks you.
Oh, this is beautiful. I did a bit of WebGL and I wonder how they achieved fluidity like this.
Again, the proof that music and sound is 50% of success of a game. Even if the game flops the OST will live on. I always invest time in music and sound as much as possible.
Was having fun. Completed all but the scientist objective as I couldn't find the last person. I found what looked to be a hidden location and as the person there said "Hello" it crashed the page. oof.
Happy to find out it remembered my progress. And I found the final delivery and completed the game. And yes, I'm sure the girl on the roof is a 'hidden' thing. She talks about three.js, game development, and art.
I'm a recovering completionist. Don't do this to me! I've been trying to find a secret area by walking on the pipes but that is probably a red herring. But why is there a gauge there? I also haven't found the girl on the roof yet, multi-wall jumping doesn't seem to work :)
SPOILERS AHEAD (for another game, which you should have played by now, if you enjoy this game, in my opinion) There's also a hiss at the industrial site which reminds me of the game Full Throttle where you have to kick the wall at the right time. But that can't be a thing, right? But the gauge!
In one of the alleys there a trash can with one open lid and a small box on the ground next to it/ You notice an exterior stair just above teh trash can. You hop on the box, then the closed side of the trash, then the open, then the stairs. I'll leave the rest of the puzzle for you to figure out. You want to make it to the top of the building.
Thanks! That was fun. I think I got on top of most things with some glitch exploiting save for the green water tower next to the secret person. I got to the UFO but it didn't trigger a secret sequence with the sunbathing space-person. I also got into the sewer pipe but I didn't find any more secrets there. Maybe we need to combine our powers and do the secret emoji sequence. Or maybe spin the sigils in the title sequence to enable cheat mode. :-)
Is this multiplayer? There are a lot of delivery people walking and jumping erratically.
I'm not sure if they are real people. I started two sessions and I didn't see my other self, despite being in the same location. Also, both times, the starting place was the same. If that would be the case for everyone, there would be many people there who just start the game.
There's probably a bunch of different rooms/shards/servers and you get randomly allocated to one when starting
Yes, you are right! I opened one game, and then opened like 5 other of them, and the final one got the same server as my first. Multiplayer confirmed!
Damn I'd love to play a Zelda game with that level of NPC detail and style.
You can, that game is Wind Waker
Besides the visual style being very similar, there's an island in the game with about the same amount of NPCs, and they all have their own lives and many give you chores like this one.
It even works with a controller (steam controller) :-)
Neat. Mini map would be cool.
Oh my god. This is amazing.
Decentraleyes extension on Firefox results in garbled text. Not sure why this happens. It is supposed to serve some common assets locally instead of requesting them over the network.
This should have been a steam game. I played worse games there !
It still can be. This is a really good use case for electron. Steam doesn't care what kind of program it's launching.
this is the most cute, beautiful shit i've seen all year. i love the fact that there are other players everywhere, since it's so convenient to dive into it via browser.
Beautiful. Feels like the Japan of 90s Studio Ghibli movies.
I've played it through, very relaxing and esthetically pleasing
I think I got softlocked, I dropped from the top of a factory building into an area where I'm just stuck lol.
obligatory list of similar stuff.
- alba: a wildlife adventure. more gameplay but somewhat similar controls/feel
- a short hike. isometric but similar feel (thanks thrance)
- the legend of zelda: the wind waker. haven't played, but mentioned in a few other comments
- proteus. first person and more subtle gameplay
anything else?
If we're going off vibes alone, I believe "A Short Hike" would be closer.
yes, thanks! i was unsure whether to include it because it looks quite different. but you are right, it has the similar exploratory vibe and is a great game.
It's gorgeous. But I can't figure out why they didn't just use real japanese text instead of fake text.
A lot of games do this. They want you to get a particular feeling without a real language breaking that spell for some folks.
'cause most people would not be able to read it and would relegate the game/site/project/... as something tailored to the 130 million (or thereabouts) of more than 8 billion people who do read Japanese and most likely sideline it.
Heh, little prince tries gig work ;)
100% had the same little prince connection the moment it loaded. Quite pretty indeed.
This is fantastic.
If I may ask, how did you do the environment models? Did you use textures and UV mapping? or just untextured models with a shader for the contours?
Is it truely a tiny planet or just shader effects?
Probably shaders. The curvature's too extreme, and the way shadows move as you get close to them doesn't match physical reality.
Meh, that’s too bad, would have been awesome to see a planetoid engine.
Is this coded in pure WebGL or using a library like Three JS?
Three.js
Works really well on a tablet (iPad), which is quite rare for JS games, I’ve found.
A very cool game! I just wish I could look around while standing still. Well done.
Lots of fun! Just the right amount of gameplay.
Very good game! Thanks for sharing.
Kind of curious about the physics of this; the planet would obviously have to be ridiculously dense, but just how dense?
This was really amazing, thank you for making this.
i don't know if it is a browser issue, but on firefox the text in messages is invisible.
Same here, in Firefox ESR 140. Could be related to privacy extensions, or the dev is just using some extremely new (or non-standard) API.
it's not ublock, but it must be some other extension or setting. it works on an empty profile
Worked fine for me, even on Linux. Maybe you have some sort of blocker extension?
mind blown.
Can I ask the author if AI helped him with this? Is it multiplayer too?
I ask as I have been deving a webgl game for a few years
If only there was an equivalent of the Arts funding for legit beautiful art via new media…
It may be hard to find an audience (revenue) but these kind of gems should be encouraged similar to traditional art form.
It is somewhat obscene that there is art in galleries out there with far less effort and talent that go for millions in both funding and revenue.
Some really beautiful style and graphics. Never mind delivery I was just admiring the style.
The spherical game environment works really well, would be great if it expand as you play more
Absolutely masterful. Setting the standard for web based games. Congratulations!
When experience meets creativity, imagination delivers simplicity.
Very fun! And multiplayer too! Had some fun spamming emojis at other people :)
Beautiful. I especially like how *obviously* Japanese the village looks.
Absolutely stunning. Well done.
Absolutely fantastic. Animation is smooth in desktop and mobile
This is really great - great style, charming little world. Love it!
Fantastic work! We need more of this on the web.
Runs great on Firefox on Pixel 3 so already GOTY
Oh man I love "tiny planets" and anything based on them!
Very pleasant. happy to report -- i delivered all packages.
great effort, consistent styling, nice gameplay!
huge success as side project and for the CV!
. Loved it. The art was refreshing and interactions so fluid.
is this available as a standalone bin/game?
Completed the game, really awesome!!
––from San Francisco
So Impressive
This is lovely! well done.
Beautiful, thanks for sharing!
This is spectactular.
This is beautiful. Congrats.
This is beautiful
What a delightful little game!
Smooth, I enjoyed it a lot.
This is a masterpiece
This is amazing. Impressive.
haha this is cool
immediately hit a bug where i had like 3 character skins at once though
Really amazing. A rare drop of meticulous, hand-crafted beauty in an ocean of AI slop and bloat, so refreshing.
It made me young again man. Wandering around, exploring. The Pleasure of Finding Things out. Cheers bro.
Fantastic I love it
This is amazing.
Holy crap this game beautiful. It's inspiring, in the way I used to feel when I first loved video games.
Beautiful piece of art
Programming is magic
I know most comments are just saying wow - but wow indeed. Felt like a kid on Newgrounds once more. Blown away
The guy in the cave having the midlife crisis and his wife sending him clothes had me in tears. The lost kid in the woods who can hear his dad. The lack of any meaningful gratitude... he just seemed so checked out. I felt so jealous of his wife who still cared. Who kept saying tulips take time.
Not even a complicated storyline but very poignant.
I'm proud i found the UFO lmao
I haven't found any UFOs but I did find an alien
You can see it looking out from the cliff next to the red house on the hill. But I couldn’t actually get to the UFO, I tried going all around the other hill it is on top of but I am not sure if it is accessible.
Where is the alien?
The alien is lounging on the beach. You actually can get to the UFO (you can also see it in the preview before you hit "begin"). Cross the wooden bridge by the red cliff house, then turn right to face the stilts holding up the house. Walk a few meters towards the water but don't walk into the water. Follow the waterline on your right, towards a tree. Pass the tree to where you'll find a "path" spiraling up and to the left around a larger rock. You'll have to make a few jumps to wind your way up the rock, then you'll be at the UFO
His ship is the opposite side of the water. It's a bit tricky to find :D
Cliff note, take a look way yonder.
Developer, my friend, you are the reason I map key bindings in the keyboard.
WASD ... esdf for life ... be the center.
Amazing!
this is truly a strand type game
very well done
Beautiful!
how is it so damn fast
Nice one
Beautiful!
Ummm... it seems that it doesn't work on Firefox mobile for android. I just see a black screen.
Strange, I am also on Firefox for Android and the game works fine.
amazing job !
amazing
well done!!
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