alt Hacker NewsAsterogue is a "juicy" graphical coffeebreak roguelike I made that is pretty much directly inspired by the original Rogue in terms of scope and features. You descend 17 levels into the heart of an asteroid to find The Orb and save the universe. There are a bunch of different monsters which get progressively harder as you descend. Instead of magic there is technology and you can pick up nanotech items and beakers of chemicals to buff your character (or hurt them if you get unlucky).
I built Asterogue over the course of a couple of months while I was bored on a break from work due to illness. The game was always built with web tech but I only released it on Android and Windows at first because that seemed to be the right way to release a game. Well I recently realized maybe the right way is the wrong way. Maybe this web thing really is catching on. So now I'm trying out a web release to see if I can make it easier for more people to play Asterogue. So far this is working well and the game is getting more daily players than it ever did as a native app, which I'm very grateful for!
For the web based version I am trying a new payment model. The original Asterogue was like most other games in that you simply buy it in the app store or on Itch and download the game. This time around I am trying a new experiment with this and instead of buying a downloadable binary, you can play the first few levels free in your browser and then you pay one-time to unlock the full game online if you want to continue. I think this strikes a nice balance for players as you get to try it out and only continue if you're actually into the game once you have picked up the vibe. I haven't really seen this done before with web based games so it's all a bit of an experiment.
This release also includes a bunch of fixes and new features based on feedback I received from players after the native version was release.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my little roguelike game. Have fun!
Replies
Quick question, does purchasing the game from your website also give you the windows version as well? I’d like to see if I can run it on my steam deck but it’s not clear to me if you only get the browser version or not. The Itch.io page for your game mentions the windows and Linux packages (and it’s cheaper?) so I wanted to check before buying.
This is a really neat game. I love how you're showing that you can build fun small games on the web. I always toy with the idea of doing gamedev and seeing things like this are both fun and inspirational.
Looks awesome, I really enjoy the atmosphere of the game.
This being Hackernews, there's is generally a great interest in both the technical as well as the business side of projects such as this. Would you be ready to share some insights into how well a game like this (which is targeting certainly a niche) can do financially, both with respect to the investment as well as the revenue side of things?
Sorry if this question might be out of your comfort zone.
I was playing from iPad on iOS 17 and when I've reached level 16 and went to the stairs to the next level, the page crashed and reloaded. Is that something of a bug? It didn't look like it was an ending (if there is one) and my high score didn't get saved :/
Great work!
I played for a few minutes but then I couldn't pick up anything because I could only carry 6 items. After a few cycles of "let's see what I can drop to pick up the new thing" I just stopped playing, because that is not a fun loop to me.
This is awesome! I have made games for the browser a few times but always felt it wasn't a "serious" way to make a marketable game. Really cool to see someone else taking it seriously!
Would love to hear a bit about the tech stack or engine you used (if any)!
PSA: I've pushed a new build that fixes the show-stopping bug where getting to the last level crashes your tab. A hard refresh (ctrl-shift-R) should get you the new build.
I'm absolutely mortified that 23k people played the game with this bug present. I can't facepalm hard enough right now. My apologies and thank you for your patience!
It's really nicely done. And the effort you put into it is clearly visible. Great work and all the best!
Thanks a lot ! That's a nice simple game that brings back good old memories !
It is fun, nice one :-)
Glad to see more web games! The zero install/instant load aspect is such a huge advantage for the web. I am interested to see people's experience with monetization on web vs app stores.
These days it's possible to do almost any mobile game as a web game. I recently discovered this very polished (despite the cartoony graphics) battle royale: https://gooberdash.winterpixel.io/ and the creator has an HN post describing how they did it (Godot with wasm threads): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40372308
Another good source on the technical aspects of porting to the web is Sebastian Altonen, a very good graphics programmer who works at a company called HypeHype doing a kind of TikTok-but-Roblox hybrid. He is currently porting from WebGL to WebGPU and posting a lot about it here: https://x.com/SebAaltonen