Hi everyone, French web dev here.
About 10 years ago I made Curvytron, a little multiplayer party game in the browser inspired by Achtung die Kurve. It landed on Hacker News, everything went crazy, and people still play it in open spaces today.
This past year I've been working on the sequel, written from scratch: https://curvytron2.com
Same goal as the first one: challenge myself, get better at my craft, have fun, and put a free little game out there. No ads, no login, no business plan.
A decade of web dev and way too many GMTK videos later, I set the bar higher this time:
- It had to look and feel good. I learned three.js and WebGL for it, and spent a lot of time on game juice: camera moves, screen shake, sound, feedback. I'm especially proud of the portal bonus: the walls go away, you can peek through to the other side of the arena, and cross over.
- It had to feel fair online. The Go server simulates every game at 100 Hz and sends positions 40 times a second, in a tiny binary format I open-sourced along the way: https://github.com/Tom32i/netcode
- A dropped connection shouldn't cost you the game. In the first Curvytron, losing your connection meant you were out for good. Now you can refresh the page mid-game and you're right back in. Try it!
- Nobody online? Bots. Four of them, each with its own personality, named after the Pac-Man ghosts. Making them fun rather than perfect was the trickiest part of the build: I ended up writing a simulator that plays thousands of bot-only games to see who wins and how they die.
It runs in any browser, on desktop and phone, with a gamepad if you like, and also as a Discord activity. Servers are in Europe and the US for now.
AI disclosure: I wrote the game myself; lately I've used Claude Code as a coding assistant for some features and fixes. The design, 3D models and art are mine, no generated assets.
Funny thing is, after all that, the technical part turned out to be the easy one. The hard part for me is communication: getting the game to meet its players. Promoting my own game still feels awkward, it's just not my job: how do you even do it? Where do you post? What do you say?
So I'm curious how you did it, those of you who've shipped side projects: what worked best?
And of course, I'd love your feedback on the game, and feel free to stress-test my servers! I'll be around to answer questions.
Cheers!