Show HN: AI-built browser games, collected in one place (playgroundarcade.com)

40 points by richleigh 4 days ago

Hello, HN friends.

I spent many happy IT lessons messing around on Newgrounds when I was a kid. And, to further age me - Rotten and Maddox!

From that, I built my first site at about 12/13 with a friend - essentially, a cheat code site-turned emulator and ROMs mirror link directory. It ended up, for a late 90s/early 2000s Geocities site, becoming quite popular.

Fast forward to now and, I'm optimistically curious about what AI can do in and around gaming. I was trying to keep track on X, Reddit and elsewhere of releases - and kept losing creators and links.

So, not dissimilar to that Geocities effort, I built this site, Playground Arcade. Using GPT 6, I've pulled a huge number of games into one place for me and others to find, play, review and share. Quality will obviously vary, as with dev-built.

It auto-updates to find new AI-built browser games - there are currently more than 700, all categorised, with full creator credit, device icons and showing controller support.

Creators can add their own, too.

If nothing else, it's cost me very little, has shone a light on a good few games for the 500+ uniques to date, and helped me discover the likes of Sprout Quest (light-hearted RPG fare), Tailgrab Freeskater (a cutesy, controller-supported THPS build - great fun) and The Hourglass City (you play a PI in a noir Broken Sword-like point and click game).

In short: I think many of you might enjoy it too, and I'd love any and all feedback.

Cheers either way!

Lerc 3 days ago
I tried a couple of games on my phone that had the phone/tablet tag. They ran and were aware of touch, but everything I tried was not really a mobile targeted experience.
I'm not sure what the correct approach is to handling that. Perhaps a recommended platform so you can find something targeting a type of experience rather than mere compatibility.
Still, every one was better than YouTube games. Not a high bar, but a bar nonetheless.
- richleigh 2 days ago
  It’s a tad hit and miss with some of them, as browser does seem to be the default build, but I’ve found a good few on mobile I’ve really enjoyed. I’ll look into what else can be done here - really appreciate you having a look!
richleigh 1 day ago
Can I just say - I'm so very grateful firstly to the HN admin, who've been really cool and helpful, and secondly to you guys.
It's always fun creating something new, and even better when people actually enjoy it. Thanks to HN, there've been getting on for 2,000 new game plays since posting on here, which is a lot of people finding and playing games people are creating.
ragmondo 2 days ago
I've just added my vibe coded "end of week and I've got all this allocation left what shall I do with it" game.. which is simcity meets modern browsers and modern tech. I've opened sourced the game, but for now there is an immediate read-only view of "London" at https://civitas.reneo.app
- richleigh 1 day ago
  That's AWESOME! Thanks for taking the time - it's live now: https://playgroundarcade.com/?game=862bea8f-9145-4d1b-bc9f-8....
  I'm actually really grateful you messaged, too. I was sat here thinking - I can't wait until somebody submits a game.
  Turns out, you and a good few others have, and they hadn't been emailed to me yet, so I've just fixed that. Teething issues and all that!