[HN Gopher] A WebGL game where you deliver messages on a tiny pl...
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A WebGL game where you deliver messages on a tiny planet
Author : thecupisblue
Score : 640 points
Date : 2025-09-27 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (messenger.abeto.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (messenger.abeto.co)
| Liftyee wrote:
| I love the art style, and it plays super smoothly on mobile! No
| tutorial, but the controls are so intuitive that I didn't need
| one (joystick touch control that's in almost every 3D mobile
| game). The sense of exploration and discovery is pretty fun.
| seabass wrote:
| Really beautiful! Love the artwork and the fact that this runs so
| well in the browser. Was surprised to realize it was multiplayer!
| _pdp_ wrote:
| It will be nice to know more about how this was made.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The creator's web site says nothing:
|
| https://abeto.co/
|
| Their Twitter has three posts:
|
| https://xcancel.com/abeto_co
|
| Three of the people behind it:
|
| https://xcancel.com/vlucendo
|
| https://xcancel.com/michaelsungaila
|
| https://kevincolombin.bandcamp.com/
| Biganon wrote:
| It say nothing but boy what a beautiful website
| unglaublich wrote:
| This is amazing. Impressive.
| ptak wrote:
| Beautiful!
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Beautiful. I got stuck in the corner behind Steve and game over -
| couldn't figure out how to navigate out, just kept triggering his
| dialog.
| 6581 wrote:
| There's lots of spots where you can get stuck. Really needs a
| "reset position" option.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Yeah, I had to end the game due to getting stuck between the
| fencing on the sea side and the chemical plant columns.
| firefoxd wrote:
| The font? The art style? The fluidity on a mobile device? It's
| fantastic.
|
| I wasn't able to deliver packages but I was too mesmerized to be
| mad about that. Beautiful game. Kudos.
|
| Edit: I did figure it out and completed all the deliveries. So
| many potential. It reminds me a bit of Sky by thatgamecompany
|
| Edit 2: for the author, I noticed several players approached me
| and tried to communicate. Please explore games like Journey
| (thatgamecompany) to see different ways people communicate
| without chatting. People can help each other, veterans can guide
| newbies all without using words. Every time I met a player in the
| game back in the days, they sent me a heartfelt message.
| logicallee wrote:
| I played for a few minutes. I wasn't able to deliver packages
| either.
| riggsdk wrote:
| The game doesn't really explain that too well. You have to go
| find the packages first before you can deliver it. For
| example the old lady asks you to deliver an offering at a
| temple.
| DenisDolya wrote:
| I also didn't really understand how to do it, but I liked the
| game, it's so beautiful and peaceful, it's a shame there's no
| chat and you have to speak through emojis.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Some people have an arrow on top of their head, and when you
| approach them there is a dialog balloon with "...". If you
| click on them they give you a task.
| DenisDolya wrote:
| Thanks
| kaismh wrote:
| You need to click on npc to start conversation, one of them is
| office worker, he will give you a delivery
| shayway wrote:
| It really is lovely. I had the same thought about refining
| interactions a bit -- I would also suggest Meadow by Might &
| Delight as an example of nonverbal communication done well.
| Blahah wrote:
| The game is wonderful and I'm so glad it doesn't have chat! My
| 9yo niece and I played it through side by side and if it had
| chat or consistent remote player presence that wouldn't have
| been appropriate.
| firefoxd wrote:
| That's why I suggested other means of communication other
| than chat.
| web007 wrote:
| There's a poop symbol on the bottom right, click it to see
| ways to communicate.
|
| I was surprised to learn the random messengers are other
| humans!
| Levitating wrote:
| I think it's the curvature of the world that's making it run so
| well on mobile. There's never to much models on-screen to draw.
| temporallobe wrote:
| Love the design and concept of a tiny planet - reminds me of
| Super Mario Galaxy in that way. Definitely needs a tutorial or a
| short "How to Play" dialog or page.
| seabass wrote:
| On the other hand, I'm so glad it didn't. I enjoyed a few
| minutes of exploration before realizing what I was meant to be
| doing.
| freehorse wrote:
| Second this. Pretty much standard/intuitive controls, it was
| fun discovering what the game was about while captivated by
| the beautiful music and graphics.
| upmostly wrote:
| Absolutely stunning experience. The way the houses rolled over
| the hill as I walked. Incredible.
| raincole wrote:
| Stuck at loading screen for a few minutes. Hugged by HN?
| capitainenemo wrote:
| not likely to be your problem, but if you are using firefox
| resist fingerprinting, you need to whitelist most webgl apps
| that use large textures, since resist fingerprinting forces a
| standard texture size that is a bit on the small side. or maybe
| your machine is really old and you're hitting same problem for
| real. the game doesn't really detect errors.
| tyleo wrote:
| Agreed with everything said here about the beauty. I found the
| camera controls pretty clumsy though. I played in portrait,
| landscape probably would work better.
| doophus wrote:
| Yeah the camera's horrible. I found myself snaking left and
| right just trying to walk in a straight line.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Isn't this how camera in these games always used to work? You
| have to nudge your character to control it.
| seabass wrote:
| I'm curious how you build something like this. I see file types
| in the network tab which, as a web dev, I've never worked with
| before. ktx2 and drc extensions, for example. I'm also seeing
| some wasm and threejs. Is there an engine that outputs these
| things or is it more of a manual process to bring everything
| together?
| holoduke wrote:
| Threejs is like the jQuery for building 3d stuff. But it's not
| a platform like Unity or Unreal engine. But it doesn't look
| overly complicated.
| fatbird wrote:
| Having done some non-trivial things with threejs, I'd guess
| it's basically like this: 3JS is the rendering engine (taking
| advantage of WebGL); game logic is in Javascript; ktx2 is an
| OpenGL container holding the world data and other meshes; from
| looking at the filenames, WASM bits are used for loading the
| ktx2 data (draco_decoder.wasm). ogg files are for sound. The
| multiple worker files imply that the app is using web workers
| to run the WASM performantly to load the world.
| paxys wrote:
| ktx2 = textures
|
| drc = 3d shapes (I think)
|
| ogg = audio
|
| All of these would normally be bundled in the game installer,
| but are sent down piece by piece over the network in this case.
|
| Then there's some wasm and js for the game's business logic.
| The browser has WebGL APIs that enable running all of this.
|
| I'm assuming they used a library or engine like Unity, Godot or
| Three.js that supports WebGL as an execution target.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Definitely Three.js or at least something similarly low-
| level. I doubt you can get this kind of performance with
| Godot or Unity on the web.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| ktx is Khronos Texture a format for storing compressed textures
| (=image data) so that they can be uploaded to GPU memory
| without decompressing step inbetween
|
| drc is Draco Compression, it's a library from Google to
| compress mesh data
| jsheard wrote:
| KTX _can_ just store compressed GPU textures as-is, but in
| this case they 're using the Basis Universal codec which is a
| bit more involved. Basis stores textures in a super-
| compressed form, which is decompressed at runtime to produce
| a less compressed (but still compressed!) format that the GPU
| can work with. The advantage is that it's smaller over the
| wire and one source file can decompress to several different
| GPU formats depending on what the users hardware supports.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| Neat. Mini map would be cool.
| bavaga wrote:
| Beautiful piece of art
| ionwake wrote:
| mind blown.
|
| Can I ask the author if AI helped him with this? Is it
| multiplayer too?
|
| I ask as I have been deving a webgl game for a few years
| tomgag wrote:
| Beautiful. Plays super smoothly on Firefox with NoScript, uBlock
| Origin and many other privacy extensions. But it lacks a player
| tutorial IMHO.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Is it truely a tiny planet or just shader effects?
| reactordev wrote:
| I think people are confused that they have to deliver packages
| they already possess. Instead the instructions should read...
|
| "Explore and Make Deliveries"
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Is this multiplayer? There are a lot of delivery people walking
| and jumping erratically.
| npteljes wrote:
| I'm not sure if they are real people. I started two sessions
| and I didn't see my other self, despite being in the same
| location. Also, both times, the starting place was the same. If
| that would be the case for everyone, there would be many people
| there who just start the game.
| andrecarini wrote:
| There's probably a bunch of different rooms/shards/servers
| and you get randomly allocated to one when starting
| flockonus wrote:
| Idea for letting the player move the camera alone: Top 1/3
| portion of the screen is for camera movement alone, bottom 2/3
| keep as is for player movement
| zobzu wrote:
| very well done
| ta12653421 wrote:
| great effort, consistent styling, nice gameplay!
|
| huge success as side project and for the CV!
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| It could use a tutorial but this is probably the first time that
| I didn't care about the actual aim of the game because of how
| beautifully it looks and sounds. I could just run around in your
| little world forever and feel nice. It's really well done.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Kind of curious about the physics of this; the planet would
| obviously have to be ridiculously dense, but just how dense?
| c0balt wrote:
| Awesome game, the graphics especially were nicely made. The cel
| shading (iirc) went well with the art style.
|
| Played through all missions and at the end had enough of the
| concept but appreciated the AOD. Especially the little bits of
| the environment, like the sleeping fox in the forest, were nice.
| andrewrn wrote:
| What a delightful little game!
| sheerun wrote:
| I've played it through, very relaxing and esthetically pleasing
| fallinditch wrote:
| The spherical game environment works really well, would be great
| if it expand as you play more
| iandanforth wrote:
| Lots of fun! Just the right amount of gameplay.
| zkmon wrote:
| Oh, this is beautiful. I did a bit of WebGL and I wonder how they
| achieved fluidity like this.
| jackblemming wrote:
| Just chiming in with more positivity: was pleasantly surprised
| how fast this loaded and ran on mobile. Impressive work.
| gettingoverit wrote:
| Loved the artstyle, but controls... uhh... let's say they were on
| par with a bad PC port of Sonic Adventure. I can barely control
| where I'm going, because the camera just rotates randomly.
| Something I'll never miss from the old days.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The controls are the only gripe I have with this amazing work.
|
| If I was in Unity, I would address this issue by manually
| placing a bunch of virtual cameras in the world and using
| cinemachine to blend between them. The size of this world is
| small enough to justify manual placement and configuration of
| each. You could also just focus on the complex areas and let
| the default follow cam handle the rest.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| This really wants to be controlled by twin thumbsticks.
| lavela wrote:
| ..or mouse for camera.
|
| But I kind of understand it. I did a somehow similar project
| before and for people who are not trained in video game style
| controls it is quite hard to get used to them ad-hoc.
|
| Assuming this project is at least partially aimed at art
| directors, project leads and such aka people who aren't
| necessarily gamers, detached movement/camera controls are a
| bit risky.
| sram1337 wrote:
| I appreciate what seems like an attempt to make a "smart camera"
| that gets out of the way of the player and unburdens them from
| having to control both a player and the perspective of the
| camera. That burden, of controlling two entities (player and
| camera) is large for people who are unused to playing video
| games.
|
| Was this dynamic on your radar when building the game and camera
| system? Would love to hear your thoughts.
| laurentlb wrote:
| I'd rather have the choice to control the camera (the "smart"
| camera could be used only if I don't control it), because it
| didn't work well for me.
|
| Nice game otherwise.
| npteljes wrote:
| Also visit their main site: https://abeto.co/ . The animation is
| mind-blowing.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| It's not obvious how to access any content on that page? The
| animation is cool though.
| shae wrote:
| When you finish the game you get the credits for who created it.
|
| There's also a threejs reference in a hard to reach area.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Absolutely stunning. Well done.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This is absolutely adorable. I love the art style and the vibe. I
| love the tiny planet concept. Great work.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| haha this is cool
|
| immediately hit a bug where i had like 3 character skins at once
| though
| onevarez wrote:
| This is beautiful, kudos. I'm more than interested to read about
| the building process of this masterpiece.
| MrDisposable wrote:
| This is fantastic.
|
| If I may ask, how did you do the environment models? Did you use
| textures and UV mapping? or just untextured models with a shader
| for the contours?
| softfalcon wrote:
| Am sitting at a game jam right now and took a break to browse HN.
| Found this and started playing for a bit. Now everyone is asking
| about it, this is a really polished and fun WebGL game. Amazing!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It took me longer than I'd care to admit to realize it was a font
| of readable text and not just random glyphs. I like the style of
| them.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I got Hayao Miyazaki vibes about this game. Arigatou.
| computerdork wrote:
| Me too:)
| Keyframe wrote:
| The boss reading the letter even looks like the guy.
| FpUser wrote:
| Some really beautiful style and graphics. Never mind delivery I
| was just admiring the style.
| umvi wrote:
| Took me way to long too realize the other in-world delivery
| people were other players and not NPCs
| Jotalea wrote:
| I spent more time enjoying the graphics and style than actually
| playing. it runs so well on a mobile device, I've never seen
| something like this.
|
| as for the game itself, I couldn't understand how to deliver the
| messages.
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Thank you, I thought it was just me .
| mountainriver wrote:
| Reminds me of Jet Set Radio
| keanebean86 wrote:
| I have a cheap android phone that's 4 years old. This game is
| still playable. Very impressive!
| tetris11 wrote:
| Woah, is this the same author as
|
| https://summer-afternoon.vlucendo.com
|
| ?
| 5- wrote:
| well spotted! seems to be the case:
| https://x.com/vlucendo/status/1971219342231732516
| tetris11 wrote:
| I noticed the movement UI style was the same
| Rygian wrote:
| The alien sunbathing at the beach is a nice wink.
| V__ wrote:
| I remember that. What a talent.
| geuis wrote:
| Love the beach guy makes an appearance in both.
| KevinMS wrote:
| controlling movement is much easier. Something is wrong with
| the movement in the OP game, at least on a browers
| sueszli wrote:
| This is just wonderful
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Amazing.
|
| Its got a Zelda Wind Walker vibe that I love. It was fun just
| running around exploring.
| iib wrote:
| How do you solve the second mission (the man that is hiding
| somewhere)? I've managed to find even the three.js mention, but
| nothing to start that one.
| ryancanzo wrote:
| He's in a cave near the forest. Turn right when you see the
| tree stump with the owl on it.
| SamBam wrote:
| Beautiful, as others have said.
|
| The one thing that transported me out of the game was the
| arbitrary blocking around the ocean / the end of the stream. (I
| assume those go to the same place, from different sides.)
|
| It seems on such a tiny world the water should never be more than
| waist deep, so why not just let us explore the whole thing. I
| didn't quite feel like I got to go all the way around the tiny
| world, and being fenced by an invisible barrier broke the fourth
| wall.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| So Impressive
| prameshbajra wrote:
| Oh my god. This is amazing.
| latexr wrote:
| The camera, controls, and difficult to discern invisible walls
| were frustrating to the point I had to just quit the game, even
| after completing over half of the deliveries. On Safari on macOS
| there is also a glitch where the character's clothes keep
| changing, and I can't see any other players there (it was only
| when I tried it on iOS that I realised this is Journey-like).
|
| But the game is beautiful and peaceful and I'm still glad I got
| to experience it. I'll definitely share it with some friends.
| Thank you for making it.
| Skullfurious wrote:
| Pretty damn cool experience. Definitely the most polished browser
| game I've tried. The limited scope really makes it fantastic and
| since it's such a small vertical slice the world feels very full
| of detail. The art style is fantastic as well.
| chistev wrote:
| Programming is magic
| nicexe wrote:
| Decentraleyes extension on Firefox results in garbled text. Not
| sure why this happens. It is supposed to serve some common assets
| locally instead of requesting them over the network.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| Damn I'd love to play a Zelda game with that level of NPC detail
| and style.
| ghurtado wrote:
| You can, that game is Wind Waker
|
| Besides the visual style being very similar, there's an island
| in the game with about the same amount of NPCs, and they all
| have their own lives and many give you chores like this one.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| has a lot of potential
|
| feedback after 5m
|
| * there should be a help section, all i could figure out is how
| to walk with up/left/down/right, and w/a/s/d. And the mouse. * I
| got nauseous after a bit, not sure if that is everyone or just me
| but I did have some bad nausea on a ride (teacups) at the local
| carnival/fair a few months ago, and it comes back every now and
| then. * the controls on desktop seem too sensitive. I had to
| eventually walk with W and then go left and right with the arrow
| keys, but even then it was too sensitive
|
| I left after 5m because of the nausea.
|
| I liked the music and peacefulness.
| la_oveja wrote:
| camera control is non existant, you just go and game chooses
| what you see. let me control the camera please
| bilkow wrote:
| Yeah, I also got motion sickness from the camera! I managed to
| complete as I really liked everything else but I'm still a bit
| nauseated.
| arkensaw wrote:
| This is stunning, and I adore it. I had an idea to build a game
| set on a tiny planet but I never even started, and here you have
| created something that's awe-inspiring. keep it up!
| geuis wrote:
| Love all of it except for the camera controls on iOS. Not sure
| how you could improve them but they need some work. Camera gets
| too close to the character a lot. Might consider two touch
| controls that separate movement direction and camera position.
| xixixao wrote:
| Agreed. Same for movement. It's a little too hard to run
| straight sometimes.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Beautiful design, but uncontrollable and unplayable. Edit: on a
| phone I'm constantly bumping into walls.
| Biganon wrote:
| What? On desktop? Found it extremely easy to control...
| cdelsolar wrote:
| i can't find the mountain temple :(
| hkon wrote:
| Smooth, I enjoyed it a lot.
| Biganon wrote:
| This is the loveliest thing I've ever seen on the web. The
| feeling of being immediately immersed in a universe. A work of
| art.
| nfbx wrote:
| this is the most cute, beautiful shit i've seen all year. i love
| the fact that there are other players everywhere, since it's so
| convenient to dive into it via browser.
| rdrd wrote:
| Beautiful. You can just tell when things are made with the core
| premise of how they wanted someone to FEEL playing it. Not some
| lore, not some "cool" gameplay ideas they had, not some fancy gfx
| concept they'd prototyped. It just feels different when you know
| it's been approached from a completely emotional perspective.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Nice one
| saint11 wrote:
| Wow this looks amazing, but the camera made me very nauseous, I
| had to stop playing.
| bdcp wrote:
| I'm proud i found the UFO lmao
| Levitating wrote:
| I haven't found any UFOs but I did find an alien
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(page generated 2025-09-27 23:00 UTC)