alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Phive, a Gomoku-like game to play with friends or solo
In 2025, my family and I had a long streak of playing a Gomoku / Go Bang / five-in-a-row based game called OK Play. I built a web version so that we could play any time we wanted (i.e. on our phones after kiddos went to sleep).
The first player to get five-in-a-row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) wins. In the first phase of play, players take turns placing their pieces next to existing pieces (always edge-to-edge; you can't place a piece with only a corner-to-corner connection). After players exhaust their pieces, play moves into the movement phase: you pick up an existing piece you own and place it according to the previous placement rules. During the movement phase, you cannot move a piece that would leave other pieces disconnected. Play continues in player order until someone wins.
I wrote the app using Elixir's Phoenix framework with Daisy UI / Tailwind CSS for styling. The app is deployed on Gigalixir via its generous free plan. I am by no means a frontend developer / designer, so there's for sure better ways to implement things than what I have here. I mostly focused on making it mobile friendly and getting it to support light and dark mode. There likely exists browser / device specific bugs, since we've only tested it out on our phones (iPhone 13 Pro, Safari / Chrome) and my computer (MacBook Pro, Safari). Happy to hear any suggestions, frontend or otherwise, if you have them!
Developing this has been a real journey. Highlights have included learning about Gomoku and its variants, articulation points (and Trajan's algorithm for strongly connected components), and the Monte Carlo tree search algorithm (for the intermediate level "AI" mode I've recently added for single-player use). Lowlights have all been CSS related.
I'd love to add a "matchmaking" mode in the future. I haven't really looked too much into the mechanics for how that's usually done though - it'll be a great learning opportunity!
Comments
I played against the AI.
The red "new game" button is too visible. I pressed it twice in the first times, and then I learned to not press it. Perhaps it would be nice to hide it a little.
When the AI has an obvious move like in the case "Ai Hu Hu Hu Hu " , then the AI plays too fast. We made some games a long time ago and we added a minimal delay (like .2 seconds?) so it's easier to understand that you play and later the AI plays. (Also, to make the computer seem smarted, because it has to think a lot :) .)
Nice work, this is fun! I've only played against the AI so far, managed to win on Beginner.
I think it would benefit from some little animations so it's clearer what's going on. But making that work nicely across both desktop and mobile could be a real pain, so I wouldn't blame you for punting it until later. :)
A smaller suggestion: maybe draw all the spare pieces on screen, rather than just displaying e.g. "15 pcs" as text. That way you can see at a glance when your stock is dwindling. Experts won't need that but it could be useful for beginners.