[HN Gopher] Replicube: A puzzle game about writing code to creat...
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       Replicube: A puzzle game about writing code to create shapes
        
       Author : poetril
       Score  : 121 points
       Date   : 2025-05-14 01:55 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (store.steampowered.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (store.steampowered.com)
        
       | xypage wrote:
       | Went to check it out, it has a demo so it's worth giving it a
       | shot, but then I went to look at what else this developer has
       | published just to find it's the guy behind the original jelly car
       | games?? Which they have a sequel to on their steam page and the
       | music instantly sent me back. This became a huge nostalgia trip
       | on accident, thanks for sharing!
        
         | wingerlang wrote:
         | He is quite active on YouTube, sharing progress and behind-the-
         | scenes of his games.
        
           | fcoury wrote:
           | To save everyone a click, this is the video where he talks
           | about this game:
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k_IZhIu_BU
        
         | mcphage wrote:
         | The new Jelly Car game (Jelly Car Worlds) is a ton of fun.
        
       | jaaamesey wrote:
       | Literally my favourite game of this year, thanks so much for
       | making this!
        
       | keyle wrote:
       | That's nice because it's a programming game, but it doesn't send
       | you in the deep-end. Whatever you do appears on the screen pretty
       | much instantly, so you get that constant feedback loop, it's like
       | a 3D voxel REPL.
       | 
       | Many programming games got complex real quick and frankly
       | annoying. I like this model, it's simple, if you let it through,
       | it's a block, return a number for a colour.
        
         | lifthrasiir wrote:
         | And yet you _can_ make it as deep as you like, thanks to the
         | presence of leaderboard. In fact, some code golfers including
         | me quickly jumped into the wagon ;-)
        
           | keyle wrote:
           | Add a 4th dimension, time, woo!
        
         | KeplerBoy wrote:
         | It's a lot like shader programming. I guess one could argue it
         | is shader programming.
        
           | keyle wrote:
           | Good point I didn't see it that way, but that's a perfect
           | analogy.
        
       | mjevans wrote:
       | The description reminds me of 'that turtle program' I encountered
       | as a child...
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
       | 
       | Hopefully this program also helps teach children new ways of
       | thinking. As a suggestion, any sort of 'building blocks'
       | graphical script language that doesn't need words?
        
         | Charon77 wrote:
         | This is still being taught at schools in my country even now
        
           | sitkack wrote:
           | Lucky kids, as much as Scratch has replaced Logo, Logo
           | fosters deeper thinking.
        
         | kej wrote:
         | As an aside, Python includes a `turtle` module that mimics the
         | drawing experience of Logo. It's a fun way to introduce kids to
         | some programming ideas.
         | 
         | https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html
        
           | junon wrote:
           | I kind of recall seeing turtle in a number of places to refer
           | to draw cursors. Kind of funny how much the term stuck, I
           | think due entirely to Logo.
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | I was going to mention the same thing. Turtle is fantastic.
        
         | Yoric wrote:
         | Snap! https://snap.berkeley.edu/
         | 
         | Also, I heartily recommend the demoes that the author is giving
         | regularly at FOSDEM. They're really fun to watch :)
        
         | noduerme wrote:
         | Yeah, you must be my age. I was kinda blessed to go to a school
         | that had a couple Apple IIes and let the kids take turns using
         | Logo to draw shapes with the turtle, when I was 8 years old or
         | so. I'd written some BASIC before on my mom's IBM-PC (stupid
         | "Hello, what's your name?:" GOTO 100 kind of stuff), but Logo
         | was a new way of thinking about the screen for me. Probably
         | that and the early Rand/Robyn games (the Manhole, Cosmic Osmo)
         | got me into coding. Soon after, my school bought some Mac SEs
         | and I spent the rest of my elementary school screwing around
         | with HyperCard after school, trying to make an RPG.
         | 
         | If there's one thing I'd love to suggest to parents, it's this:
         | Give your kid an obsolete platform with nothing to do on it
         | except _make stuff_ and _figure out how it works_. It 's just
         | as entertaining, but diametrically opposite in terms of
         | educational quality from giving them pre-made apps to play
         | with.
         | 
         | (Full disclosure: My dad wouldn't even allow D&D into the house
         | because it was someone else's game. If we wanted RPGs, we had
         | to design our own on paper.)
        
       | skeptrune wrote:
       | I am excited to see coding become more and more of a creative
       | medium as AI frees up from the monotony of crafting business
       | logic slop.
        
       | bstsb wrote:
       | i initially found this game through the developer's tiktok
       | account - they've got some great marketing over there.
       | 
       | ended up getting the demo and i'll probably be buying the full
       | game
        
         | KeplerBoy wrote:
         | he got me through twitter. the man knows his marketing.
        
           | petercooper wrote:
           | I discovered it when someone made a quick slapdash Web-based
           | clone and was getting a lot of hate on X. Sometimes imitation
           | really is the sincerest form of flattery..
        
       | jzacharia wrote:
       | Saw this on X - great game, picked it up and have already sunk a
       | few hours into it.
        
       | kaan_keskin wrote:
       | i already played this 2 hours. really liked it
        
       | Charon77 wrote:
       | Tried the demo. Very good baby's first step to shaders
        
         | snarf21 wrote:
         | I don't know much about shaders but this reminds me (in concept
         | at least) of using OpenSCAD to use code to generate models for
         | 3D printing. One cool puzzle to solve doing so is using
         | different shapes to add or cut material from the existing
         | model.
        
       | nayuki wrote:
       | The 2D version of this coding game would be tixy:
       | https://tixy.land/ ,
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=tixy.land ,
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942881 ,
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24974534
        
       | einsteinx2 wrote:
       | I don't usually like programming games but this looks genuinely
       | interesting. As I saw others mentioned the similarity to the
       | thinking required for using OpenSCAD or writing shaders makes
       | this extra interesting for me because I suck at both of those
       | things.
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-14 23:02 UTC)