Hole Punch: Sling your spaceship around gravitational fields

(notoriousbfg.com)

277 points | by trwhite 13 hours ago

40 comments

  • rkagerer 10 hours ago
    Great game, though the controls on mobile are a bit too imprecise.

    As you drag a hole, the size widgets should disappear so you can better see what's around it. They could pop back up again once you're done dragging.

    Personally I'd rather if you had to press a button or something (or long press?) to add a new hole. I keep accidentally adding new ones when all I want to do is adjust an existing one.

    Also spamming the user with the help screen right off the bat is a bit much. As long as they know it's there and can pull it up / dismiss it, I think it would be more fun to sort of discover the game mechanics yourself.

    Note several of the first 8 or so levels can be accomplished with a single minimum (8) sized black hole. Eg. I liked the simplicity of doing that on level 6.

    • EA-3167 8 hours ago
      I resisted playing on mobile until I got home, and you're absolutely right that it's a whole other experience on desktop. In terms of addictive potential this reminds me favorably of that Seedship game, it's very simple, but powerfully "just one more round."
  • fogleman 8 hours ago
    Well, this is strangely familiar to a game I just vibe-coded recently!

    https://www.michaelfogleman.com/gravity-assist/

    • slopinthebag 6 hours ago
      looks like you both stumbled upon the same rlhf checkpoint
    • emkoemko 7 hours ago
      i guess thats what you get for not caring about the art work? it ends up looking the same right?
  • YeahThisIsMe 12 hours ago
    This is the year of old browser (and/or flash) games making a comeback in some form.
  • adamesque 12 hours ago
    Fun idea, but kind of maddening that I can click and hold to add mass to a hole but if i overshoot, i can't do anything subtract mass or delete a hole.
    • gschizas 11 hours ago
      Click on the hole. There will appear 3 buttons, one to add mass, one to subtract and one to delete the hole completely.
    • rapidfl 11 hours ago
      also need a way to increase the sim speed. 1.5x 2x etc

      Definitely a fun game kudos!

    • 40four 12 hours ago
      The ability to subtract mass is definitely needed. All you can do is click “undo” and try again. You can drag the holes around too. Still pretty fun, I played 5 or 6 levels
      • trwhite 11 hours ago
        I just pushed an update. Click on the hole and controls will appear. I think you'll enjoy the later levels (10+)
        • hnuser123456 11 hours ago
          Nice domain name
          • trwhite 11 hours ago
            Thanks. The important context is that I am 6ft 7 (and once knew all the words to Hypnotize)
      • msephton 11 hours ago
        Tap the black hole and it gives you ability to add and remove.
  • iamwil 12 hours ago
    This is kind of a cool concept. It's like Space Golfing.

    Another alternative is to make it like a turn-based Scorched Earth (Mother of all games), where you can either

    1. launch asteroid size projectiles across star systems in a field of stars and black holes to it each other.

    2. launch projectiles that then place black holes (perhaps either by timeout or signal--taking into account the speed of light!) to change the field.

    It's a good start!

  • nilslindemann 5 hours ago
    I love it. The dragging of black holes could be improved:

    * The black hole is not moved until the cursor has moved more than five pixels.

    * The first time the black hole moves in the dragging process, it moves more than one pixel, afterwards one. So it is a small jump and then it moves smooth.

    * The cursor icon changes to the drag symbol only after the mouse has already moved five pixels, not as soon as the mouse button is hold down.

    * When the mouse is outside the draggable zone, but still in the game window, the black hole is not dragged along the border.

    • gblargg 5 hours ago
      Also you can't move it too close to ship, but there's no feedback you're too close, so it looks it's just not responding.
  • grobibi 8 hours ago
    I refuse to hold my phone landscape even for videos so I'll never know how neat it is.

    This is not an attempt to be a jerk. Just letting you know there's people like me out there.

  • jakzurr 9 hours ago
    Way, way more fun than expected. Played on desktop, though.
  • amelius 10 hours ago
    This one was cute also:

    https://www.falstad.com/rendezvous/

    (check the autopilot option)

  • manlymuppet 11 hours ago
    Never ignored a tutorial faster.

    (This is a compliment.)

    • chirau 11 hours ago
      I know right? As soon as I saw the page, I had a rough idea of how to control things already. lol
    • trwhite 11 hours ago
      Thanks! I like the keyboard experience (space for start/stop), arrows to add/subtract mass. Maybe I will add tabbing
  • kkhire 11 hours ago
    Fantastic! Should add an (optional) instruction level, but would have loved this game as a kid.
  • fullstackwife 11 hours ago
    Very nice, being busy with sth, and I could not go through all levels and reached the one with star(sun?), but the topic of gravity assist manouver was always inspiring for me, so I enjoy this game, congrats on making it!
  • willguest 7 hours ago
    Nicely done, and interesting to see how the computer "solved" some of them. It is even sneakier that I am.
  • mosfets 11 hours ago
    This is somehow surprisingly fun, a good game to play with kids.
  • frellus 6 hours ago
    Wellll.... this is *(&#@ addictive. I need my Saturday night back now, man
  • goolz 9 hours ago
    I just spent a ton of time on this. Reminds me of the joy from those old flash sites like addictinggames.com. Bravo.
  • smorgasborg 5 hours ago
    thank you. just played all 20 levels. I want to see a dynamic mapping of the phase space as i drag a mass around. maybe i'll vibe code that.
  • baw-bag 10 hours ago
    I love these kind of things and all of their quirks. Just interacting with a webpage in a fun way. More of this!
  • joshu 9 hours ago
    i've been making a bunch of fun physics games like this. i need to push out the latest one. try this one, torture a parking optimizer: https://truckslop.joshu.dev/
  • peesem 10 hours ago
    reminds me of Gravitee, except in that game the planets are pre-positioned and you're hitting a golf ball
  • drob518 7 hours ago
    Very cool. Had some trouble figuring it out on iPad.
  • jonplackett 12 hours ago
    It’s nice but clearly designed for desktop

    It’s a mobile world. This would be so nice as a proper touch enabled game

    • leptons 10 hours ago
      >It’s a mobile world.

      Desktop and Mobile are at about a 50/50 split, no it's not exactly a "mobile world".

    • trwhite 12 hours ago
      It sorta works. Hoping to do more testing (tomorrow)
      • leetrout 12 hours ago
        Just a few tokens away from a flutter port
      • toobulkeh 11 hours ago
        Clicking too fast zooms the browser which breaks the click placement. Native Mobile would be much better.

        Great concept!

  • sebastianconcpt 9 hours ago
    Love it. And thanks for the refreshing skeumorphism
    • GalaxyNova 9 hours ago
      I don't know if it's that refreshing. Looks like standard Claude generated style.
  • simonjgreen 10 hours ago
    Well, this is going to be a fun problem
  • frellus 6 hours ago
    Well, this was (*)@&#$@# addictive. I need my Saturday night back now, man
  • NooneAtAll3 10 hours ago
    Loved it! Played all 20 levels

    Some missions have mass budget so large it seems to imply a "go fast, crash fast" solutions, but there's no time-of-flight score :(

    ha, now I want to see a leaderboard, with players' score distribution (mass/holes/time mb?), like the zachtronics games

    I had a blast. Thank you!

  • shantanujoshi 11 hours ago
    wow wonderful game this is super fun! Would love it on iOS
    • xixixao 11 hours ago
      It launches on mobile safari but doesn’t seem playable, landscape on mobile safari sucks.
      • trwhite 11 hours ago
        Sorry, it very much began as a desktop game. Hoping to work on it if I have time tomorrow
  • yogthos 7 hours ago
    I ended up making a very similar game for a hackathon with a friend years ago https://github.com/yogthos/graviton/
  • mkatx 12 hours ago
    Nice, a lot of fun!
  • jdw64 8 hours ago
    There are a lot of browser games worth playing these days. It'd be nice if there were a site that could gather them all in one place.
  • eezing 9 hours ago
    Very neat.
  • wat10000 10 hours ago
    It might be a cheat, but I'd really like a mode where the projected path of the ship had unlimited length. The trial and error cycle is a bit too long for some of the more advanced setups.
  • matheusmoreira 10 hours ago
    Love it.
  • Razengan 11 hours ago
    Feedback:

    - It would be nice to be able to manually key in the matter; on Safari desktop clicking uses up matter too quickly to set precisely.

    - Key to speed up time once running.

  • mihaaly 11 hours ago
    I love it! : )
  • davelacy 11 hours ago
    bravo - excellent game
  • Loughla 10 hours ago
    Fun, but terrible on mobile.
  • derin-picment 10 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • jheriko 6 hours ago
    [dead]