
Show HN: TitleRun – The game that only exists in your title bar - janniks
https://titlerun.xyz/
======
boogies
Someone needs to make a list of all of these one-line text games. Here goes:

ABaroids:
[http://www.thegillowfamily.co.uk/](http://www.thegillowfamily.co.uk/)

Blob jump¹²:
[https://gist.github.com/bsawyer/bc0cb3ec3a86b29e76a23104fc44...](https://gist.github.com/bsawyer/bc0cb3ec3a86b29e76a23104fc44f6d1)

Glutton C¹:
[https://gluttonc.chesterdoran.com/](https://gluttonc.chesterdoran.com/)

Bonus: Defender of the Favicon³:
[http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/](http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/)

[1]: Available as a bookmarklet! (see respective sites for details)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420528)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262529)

Title run has ushered in a new age with a second dimension!

~~~
desmondw
Inspired by this and Defender of the Favicon, I created a hangman game that
uses the favicon and title bar: [https://desmondw.github.io/tab-
hangman/index.html](https://desmondw.github.io/tab-hangman/index.html)

~~~
boogies
Nice!

Might just be my weird browser (Palemoon, originally a fork of Firefox) but
the favicon doesn't change from the initial gallows, though everything else in
the game, and all of the other games except blob jump work for me (including
Defender of the Favicon).

------
frettchen
Reminds me a bit of Defender of the Favicon:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262529)

Really clever concept, and I like the ease of building levels for it.

~~~
yellowapple
Feels similar to NeXTSTEP-style "dockapps"; my desktop (running openbox) is
full of 'em, and they're delightful. Something about squeezing as much
functionality as possible into a 64x64 space just makes my desktop feel so
alive and cozy.

------
janniks
I just released TitleRun on ProductHunt. Let me know what you think! (and go
easy on me, it's the first game that I developed)

Feel free to share or upvote if you like it!
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/titlerun](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/titlerun)

~~~
philtar
Curious: Isn't it considered bad to link directly to the product like that?

------
jedberg
I loaded it up and it was in a tiny tab. I played and won on my first try.

Then I expanded the title bar so I could see the whole level at once. Now I
can't win.

For some reason being able to only see the next box in the tiny tab makes it
way easier for me!

Cool game, I kind of want to steal this for my webpage, but at least on my
system, it spikes the CPU, so maybe not.

~~~
chrisco255
I wonder if there's a metaphorical lesson here. If you focus on the immediate
obstacles in front of you and don't worry too much about what's coming next,
you'll probably do better.

------
neilsimp1
This is so pointless and I love every bit of it. Perfect Easter egg for the
Chrome dinosaur game or something similar.

~~~
boogies
Someone with more skills than me should make a PR to include this in Firefox,
it would provide ∞ times more entertainment than the little unicorn and
about:robots easter eggs they have now.

------
wilwade
Reminds me of the great Line Wobbler game:
[https://wobblylabs.com/projects/wobbler](https://wobblylabs.com/projects/wobbler)

Still need to make one of these using the Twang code
[https://github.com/Critters/TWANG](https://github.com/Critters/TWANG)

~~~
umvi
Is there any way to buy or otherwise play line wobbler?

------
splatzone
This is super cool! With fast games like this it's often nice to be able to
start playing again quickly - maybe consider making space restart the game
instantly rather than having to press R and wait for the page to reload.

~~~
janniks
Thanks for the feedback - you are completely right! This will go into the next
version.

I was just too lazy to reinitialize the game state/map. That’s why R simply
does a page refresh ;)

------
amelius
I want this but in an Xterm.

[https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Xterm-Title-3.html](https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Xterm-
Title-3.html)

~~~
PopeDotNinja
I remember about 20 years ago my brother made ASCII Street Fighter with all of
the characters and special moves. It was kind of insane.

------
ajb
Lol - didn't think it would work in firefox on android, but it does - kudos!

This takes me back, as the gameplay is almost exactly the same as the game for
the Psion Organiser II (which had a 2 line screen) which you had to
laboriously key in from the back of the manual. Except in that one, IIRC (err,
30 years ago) you could choose when to move back from the top line, and the
missiles gradually came faster and faster.

------
butz
Which browsers still have title bar enabled by default? I'm on Firefox and
this game actually is played in tab, not actual window title bar.

~~~
badsectoracula
Firefox allows you to show the title bar (View -> Customize, the checkbox is
at the bottom left corner). I always have it enabled since it makes it easier
to resize and move the browser window around without accidentally
moving/tearing off a tab. Also it shows more of the title. In general i prefer
having the title bar there.

FWIW i also have the menu bar always visible :-P.

------
ninju
On the landing page you might want to add a couple screenshots of how it looks
on different browsers to help the clueless (me included)

------
recursive
The animation seems jerky in the sense that the character seems to skip past
obstacles. There's never a frame where it's vertically aligned.

For an obstacle positioned at 0, it appears to jump like this.

[... -2, -1, 1, 2, ....]

------
o-__-o
Has this been shared already?

[http://www.thegillowfamily.co.uk/](http://www.thegillowfamily.co.uk/)

------
willcipriano
This is the sort of thing that I see and I feel disappointed that I didn't
come up with the idea myself. Great work.

------
xwdv
Would anyone like to see Doom (1) running in a favicon? For a high enough
resolution screen, it could be possible.

------
ARandomerDude
Oh man...this would make a great easter egg.

------
orblivion
If you change the characters to not have any reference to vertical placement,
this could be a one-dimensional game.

------
millerm
That actually made me laugh. Thank you!

------
buraksarica
Nice! Is it a bit laggy to control?

~~~
janniks
It should work fine on most browsers. But it depends on the browsers
allocation of cycles for the tab, because it‘s only JavaScript. Closing other
tabs may help.

------
ben85ts
cool! just made one for the URL bar:
[https://gist.github.com/bsawyer/bc0cb3ec3a86b29e76a23104fc44...](https://gist.github.com/bsawyer/bc0cb3ec3a86b29e76a23104fc44f6d1)

~~~
boogies
Might just be my weird browser (Palemoon) (or a mistake in making it into a
bookmarklet), but this does nothing other than log "SyntaxError: identifier
starts immediately after numeric literal" in the developer tools console. The
other url-bar games mentioned in this thread all work (at least normally on
their websites).

~~~
ben85ts
Thanks for trying it! I commented on the gist with the bookmarklet version I'm
using in chrome.

------
poltinnik
Very cool! But not at original idea anymore.

------
llagerlof
I liked. More 1000 levels, please.

------
quickthrower2
In a word. FUN!

------
ASVVVAD
Something like this was posted here before
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206922)

It even have a bookmarklet that allow you to play on any webpage

[https://gluttonc.chesterdoran.com](https://gluttonc.chesterdoran.com)

~~~
ASVVVAD
Oh my bad this one runs on the title bar while the other one on the address
bar

~~~
janniks
Awesome! Love the simple page design - almost went for something similar. I
found a few games that work in the address bar, but I didn‘t know this one
yet, thanks.

P.S. you can add TitleRun as a bookmarklet as well ;)

~~~
ASVVVAD
Didn't know that's great to hear! it's fun to play ^^

