Ask HN: know any good browsergames? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: know any good browsergames?

4 pointsTichy10 comments

I know it is not the best question to ask in a community obsessed about productivity ;-) But still, do you have any recommendations? I very interested to study what makes them successful.

Also, which ones are hacker friendly? Most seem to disallow scripting, for example, which only indicates that they are boring (because they make people do things that a script could do easily as well). Any games that are interesting enough to not warrant scripting? Hacker friendly would be either interesting enough in itself, or allowing scripts (make it a battle of the scripts, maybe?).

The market seems to be booming, but I have not been able to find a browsergame that really appeals to me yet.

Also, shouldn't it be "browser games"? I have found the use "browsergames" more often, though.

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It's desktop tower defense. Don't get too close. (you've been warned.) :D

http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defens...

http://fantasticcontraption.com/

fantastic contraption. It's a physics simulator/puzzle game. I'm not aware of how it would be scripted, or why you would want to script it. But, the open ended nature of the puzzles should appeal to hacker types.

Are we talking flash games (i.e. Auditorium http://playauditorium.com/) or "text-based" browser games (i.e. Kingdom of Loathing http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/)?

More something like kingdom of loathing (which I remember to be brilliant).

I'm not sure I have a good answer for your question directly, as most browser games are really old at this point. There haven't been too many new players, and most aren't interesting and don't allow scripting.

I will say that (partially my fault) there's a whole slew of them on Facebook now. They don't have any depth, but some of them are still wildly popular. If nothing else, it's worth a look.

This might be too niche to help but: http://play.typeracer.com

As far as 'hacker friendly' maybe you're thinking of something like tetrisapp? http://tetrisapp.appspot.com/static/howto.html

This isn't a browser game, but certainly could be and targets a less-targeted demographic: http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/pivot/entry.php?id=40

ikariam.com (I play that one day to day and it is a nice distraction :))

Gameforge (the makers of IK) do others too: such as Ogame (which is similar).

I've not come across a hacker friendly one sadly: market?

Just out of curiosity what do you mean by hacker friendly? Looking at doing something in this area myself at the moment, so I'm scouting for ideas.

In my question I meant either it would allow scripting (for example Greasemonkey scripts), or it would be so interesting that scripting wouldn't be necessary.

Ikariam does allow some greasemonkey scripting. There is also Kronos that is now against the rules but used by a large # of people.

It is against the TOS but TBH as long as you dont make it obvious they dont care about simple hacks/scripts.

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