

Ask HN: know any good browsergames? - Tichy

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.<p>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?).<p>The market seems to be booming, but I have not been able to find a browsergame that really appeals to me yet.<p>Also, shouldn't it be "browser games"? I have found the use "browsergames" more often, though.
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dkd
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://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense-1-5)

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quantumhobbit
<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.

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teej
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/>)?

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

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teej
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.

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fragmede
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>

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ErrantX
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?

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randomtask
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.

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Tichy
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.

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ErrantX
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.

