[HN Gopher] OpenFront: Realtime Risk-like multiplayer game in th...
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OpenFront: Realtime Risk-like multiplayer game in the browser
Author : thombles
Score : 179 points
Date : 2025-07-11 06:27 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openfront.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (openfront.io)
| tkzed49 wrote:
| this looks cool but I'm really struggling to figure it out. I
| started a single player game which was really confusing until I
| realized I needed to click somewhere to choose my starting
| position.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Super addictive. To be fair, I still don't really get what the
| best strategy is, especially at the beginning, so I'm getting
| steamrolled by human opponents pretty easily...
| sparsely wrote:
| I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers in. It
| seems that for the first 30 seconds or so you need almost all
| soldiers to expand fast, but after that?
|
| There's a lot of luck involved too, sometimes you'll just get
| dogpiled by two neighbours and there's not much you can do, but
| at least it's fast.
| firejake308 wrote:
| IME, ports generate way more income than workers, so I go for
| pretty much fully soldiers
| diggan wrote:
| > I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers
| in.
|
| In the beginning I tried out a bunch of ratios and never
| found any strategy that seemed to have worked. Now I just
| leave it on default for entire runs, won a handful of times
| in free-for-all, seems to work out OK for most cases.
|
| In the first ~1 minute or so I keep 1K soldiers "at home" at
| all times, and whenever it goes above, I send them out in the
| "non-taken land", so basically medium-sized expansions until
| there is no land left. Then start attacking bots in the order
| of the money they have available, and once there is no bots
| left, start attacking humans.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Your population growth depends on your population size, so you
| have to not over expand at the beginning.
|
| Get allies at the beginning so that you may aggressively
| conquer bots without worrying about being conquered. Those ally
| may cross you, but they'll have a penalty so they are
| disincentive to do so.
| pastage wrote:
| It is amount of population and how much room is left so you
| want to continuously kill off soldiers to have a good
| growth/conquer ratio.
| Kinrany wrote:
| The speed of capturing depends on the ratio of soldiers
| attacking/defending. It appears to be better to accumulate
| extra soldiers and then do a big push
| tamat wrote:
| You must plant your nation during the generation fase, otherwise
| you wont exist in the game!!! (took me 10 minutes to figure out)
| ivolimmen wrote:
| Thank you; I thought I was the only one that did not get that
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Yep. I had to lookup a tutorial on YouTube to figure out what I
| was doing wrong...
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I discovered this game through Ultimus Rex's Youtube channel. I
| recommend watching him play a couple times before diving in.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@ultimus_rex40
| petercooper wrote:
| Another good player to watch is Corgi Circus who came to the
| game through being popular in the Territorial.io world, a
| similar but far simpler game:
| https://www.youtube.com/@CorgiCircus - https://territorial.io/
| is worth playing as an alternative if you only have 5 minutes
| to spare though but the strategy is quite simple.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The last thing I need in my life is to get competent at these
| quick pick up and play multiplayer browser games. Sheesh.
| diggan wrote:
| What's the fun in that? Almost half the fun of finding a new
| game is discovering how it works by trial and error. Watching
| hours of someone else playing a game I just picked up seems
| self-defeating. Are there really people who want to start new
| games and being good at them from the get go?
| remram wrote:
| Different people enjoy different things. Personally I don't
| have much interest in playing but I did enjoy watching
| Ultimus Rex's gameplay while doing other tasks.
| therealbilliam wrote:
| same! popped up on my youtube feed and i've been watching
| almost everyday
| khalic wrote:
| I would have given it a try if you didn't implement that
| deceptive GDPR notice with 30 switches you have to manually
| unselect
| psc007 wrote:
| It is open source! Check out to GitHub and discord to contribute!
|
| https://github.com/openfrontio/openfrontio
|
| It is heavily inspired by territorial.io .
|
| One of the contributing devs made an open source version:
| warfront.io, which openfront is forked from and then heavily
| developed.
|
| Warfront did not have any multiplayer so Evan, the creator of
| openfront, made it multiplayer and together with contributors
| made lots of new features.
|
| Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront repo.
| Warfront added webgl rendering, and hopefully Openfront will have
| be inspired. Openfront does not work nicely on mobile and low end
| devices currently.
| diggan wrote:
| > Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront
| repo
|
| Yeah, seems there is a for-profit company running the show now,
| so expect some squeezing in the mid-to-long term.
|
| Also, latest gameplay change seems to be trains, anyone had
| time to play around with it yet? I've played quite hours of
| Openfront and not sure how I feel about the train addition yet.
| psc007 wrote:
| For-profit company running warfront or openfront?
|
| All the developing of openfront is done for free by
| contributors, unless something changed the last week or so
| diggan wrote:
| > For-profit company running warfront or openfront?
|
| Talking about OpenFront. Seems to be run by a "OpenFront
| LLC", supposedly based in "SACRAMENTO, CA 95816" according
| to their privacy policy. Playwire (A "revenue amplification
| company") is also involved somehow into the operations, as
| you get redirected there when you hit "Advertise with us"
| link, I'm guessing they might be the publisher or
| something?
|
| As for the actual people working on the codebase, it seems
| like there are two main authors which based on the activity
| seem to be full-time employees working on the project, or
| at least contractor-based.
| openfront wrote:
| I'm the creator of OpenFront. I created an LLC mostly for
| tax purposes, but I maintain 100% ownership. No
| publishing company involved.
|
| Playwire is ad company I'm partnering with. I recently
| quit my job to work on this full time, so need to figure
| out some form of monetization.
| diggan wrote:
| Thanks a bunch of clarifying all the details! Maybe worth
| putting the info in some FAQ or somewhere on the website
| as well, always good to have somewhere for when people go
| looking :)
|
| Thanks a bunch for OpenFront as well, it's a really fun
| game I've spent lots of hours with already, although it's
| really hard :P Excited to see how the trains will be
| worked in, but it's also really enjoyable as it is so
| again, thanks for working on it!
| oaiey wrote:
| Thanks for the game!
| pastage wrote:
| On mobile I go for Coop and try hard to just support other
| players, by giving troops to the right player. Having good
| backend players is vital in Coop.
|
| Sadly communication and cooperation is very hard.
| thombles wrote:
| If you're planning on diving in, the linked "how to play" video
| is two minutes long and gets the basics across very effectively:
| https://youtu.be/jvHEvbko3uw
| mehwoot wrote:
| Love this game, fast paced multiplayer that's super strategic.
| brumar wrote:
| 20 years ago I was addicted to a game like that named
| Globalcombat.com. Good times. Few years ago it was still alive.
| Now it seems gone.
| ivape wrote:
| Risk Games are kind of niche but have a hardcore base. Check
| out Risk Legacy SC2 custom map, and Line Wars on Steam.
| pantulis wrote:
| I would argue that Risk games are not that niche, but I am
| currently too busy conquering 18 territories with 2 armies at
| least.
| ivape wrote:
| I'm speaking for its place in video games. Stuff like
| Hearts of Iron and Diplomacy are birthed from Risk but are
| extremely niche. In fact, for fully graphical video games,
| they often have board-game like communities (the games have
| no QoL systems like match making, you'll have to organize
| it yourself on Discord). For example, the QoL to be able to
| jump into a lobby like the one posted here is not available
| in $50 dollar Risk-like/Diplomacy-like games. You can't
| even do that in 4x grand strategy multiplayer games. It's a
| got a long way to go. It took some time until all the
| concepts of DND got fully fleshed out into graphical RPGs
| and MMOs. I hope the same happens with the Risk-line of
| games, but it may also forever be niche.
|
| This game right here is a offspring of SC2 Risk Legacy map:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line_War/
|
| Inspired form (imho):
|
| https://sc2arcade.com/map/1/181632/
|
| Both games have a small, dedicated community. Line wars
| usually require people in Discord to gather people for
| games.
|
| The compelling thing about Risk games is that once you make
| it past the early game, it quickly shifts into a
| sophisticated social game where you have to LARP
| geopolitical diplomacy since most countries/armies are too
| big (entire sovereign nations) by the end game.
| notsylver wrote:
| I'ts fun, I think it needs queues for different game modes
| because with 150 players you almost always get horded by
| neighbours. Being able to queue for a team game would make it a
| bit easier to learn I think
| diggan wrote:
| There is a singleplayer mode too, which is how I learned to
| play before jumping into multiplayer.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Haha - what is going on? How do I play this?
|
| Is there a way to get more UI or feedback?
| maelito wrote:
| Very addictive. Beware.
| bbno4 wrote:
| been playing this for months, absolutely love it
| gryn wrote:
| ended nuking my self by mistake and tanking my run, wish it was
| in a separate menu than all the buttons for building stuff, I
| assumed clicking it meant I was building more nuclear facilities.
| ivape wrote:
| You need to make it clear what my starting position and color is.
| diggan wrote:
| It's where you click and then the node that has a thick yellow
| outline around it. But I agree, the whole startup/placement
| sequence should be made a lot more explicit and user friendly.
| ivape wrote:
| It's very fixable. Everything else is amazing, I love it.
| ourmandave wrote:
| A feature request would be a [Rage Quit] command that simulates
| flipping the table when I'm playing against siblings who keep
| taunting me while they crush my armies.
|
| Raaaaaaugh!!!
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| By no means Risk-like IMO - territorial.io-like.
| picture wrote:
| The coming update has trains and factories! The game is mainly
| about managing compounding growth with discrete losses (having
| more land and cities increases you population cap, and your
| population follows a logistic curve, so you want to reserve an
| amount of population to maintain growth, and it's programmed so
| that you want to use a discrete amount for attacking instead of a
| constant trickle)
|
| A good strategy that works well for me is to prioritize
| moneymaking and win by cleaning up a nuclear wasteland. Some tips
| for that strategy aka trademaxxing:
|
| * The fastest way to make money is to get lots of ports and ally
| with people near and far. Boats give you more gold depending on
| their distance traveled
|
| * Set up turtled-in bases on islands and have warships patrolling
| near them to shoot down potential land invasions. This combined
| with your small land area will make it less appealing for the big
| countries to focus on you
|
| * Once you have enough funds for a MIRV, maintain strategic
| deterrence by having multiple missile silos - so you can launch
| the MIRVs any time
|
| * Continue to trademaxx and wait for the big countries to nuke
| each other into oblivion
|
| * Once the time is right (and you have enough funds for multiple
| MIRVs), move in to clean up the nuclear wasteland. Get some
| cities but don't spend too much money. If another country starts
| attacking you at this point, you can MIRV them again. You are
| also much more resistant to MIRVs since your assets are in money
| instead of structures and can rebuild quickly
| eamag wrote:
| A quick guide on how to not get destroyed right away:
| Select a grassland patch somewhere on the edge without many
| players around, many bots and an access to a see/river. More
| advanced version would be to start in a center and do more
| diplomacy later. Send 20% of troops right away when
| game starts, then move a slider in a bottom left (attach ratio)
| to 35% and expand every time you get 40% of your population (like
| 6k, 8k, 10k checkpoints). Avoid PvP. When there
| are no more free land left, start conquering bots. Try to
| encircle them, because you will annex them without spending
| troops, otherwise just try to get ones located on mountains last,
| because there's a penalty on mountains. You'll get gold every
| time you finish out the nation, spend this gold on cities first,
| then ports and some good forts to defend yourself.
| The shift from PvE to PvP must be deliberate and opportunistic.
| Only attack when you have an advantage like when they're busy
| with another war, too expanded. Get some allies because breaking
| an alliance gives a penalty. Don't rush to conquer as it will
| make you weak in a short term. Pick a strategy
| for your mid-game: City-Maxxing - this strategy
| involves investing heavily in Cities to achieve an enormous
| maximum population cap. A player with many cities can field a
| colossal army, aiming to overwhelm opponents through sheer
| numbers and a rapid troop regeneration rate. This is a land-
| centric, brute-force approach.
| Trademaxxing - this strategy focuses on building numerous Ports
| to create a vast trade network. The goal is to generate immense
| quantities of gold, which is then used to fund a powerful navy
| and a large nuclear arsenal. This is a sea-centric, wealth-based
| approach that aims to win through economic and technological
| superiority. In the late game build Missile
| Silos and SAMs in fortified, mountainous locations, break some
| alliances with a huge attach armies, or break defenses with
| nukes. To win launch MIRV on a biggest threat
| and swarm the area
| Bengalilol wrote:
| Another rabbit hole. Great experience.
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