Nice! My favorite challenge was avoiding the glowing white dots along the path.

I'm one of the developers who worked on this project. Happy to answer any questions.

More info on the project here: https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/

This game is way better than it needs to be for a quick burst of advertising. Not only is the implementation fantastic, with perfect controls, but the level design is also great. I really enjoyed the multiple routes and the fact you can skip most of the advertising displays.

It seems such a shame that this isn't a full game. Removing the advertising and adding more complex levels with puzzles would make for a perfect little distraction.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen an online game correctly tell me to use WARS keys for movement. Big props for handling non-qwerty layouts.

Great job optimizing too. Runs totally smooth on my 2012 macbook and its decrepit HD 4000 iGPU, which is no small feat for web-games these days.

I can't find anyone else mentioning this here, so interesting fact, marble madness was designed by mark cerny

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Madness

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cerny

Who is better known for designing the PS4 and PS5.

Edit: can someone explain what netlify does? I visited the site, and while I appreciate it can be difficult to explain these things in marketing blurb, I really came away none the wiser (I work as a programmer so maybe I'm not quite the target market)

That was enjoyable. I wasn't at all interested in any of the "Netlify facts" but it was fun to push the marble around and I'm impressed by how smooth the experience was. Well done!

Great implementation, very enjoyable. Any chance that you will use this foundation to make an actual game (I mean, challenging, with scores/time/etc., and without the marketing component)?

I have always missed a worthy sucessor to Marble Madness. I have tried several partial implementations or demos inspired on it, like this, but never an actual full game with the same philosophy (maybe there's some I'm missing, in which case I would like to know, of course).

Kind of off topic, but Marble Madness was a large part of what inspired me to start programming. My dad played it when he was a kid and it made an impression on him, so he had me play it on MAME as a kid. I was blown away by the fact that computers can simulate (fairly complex) falling objects in an isometric space, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to reproduce that in Game Maker 7 at the time. When I got better at math, it influenced a project in my teens that's on my resume to this day.

Is there a page somewhere that tells me what netlify is on a technical level? All I see it marketing speak and I can't make sense of it.

Any chance this could get open-sourced? This seems like a great example of a lot of stuff for which there are few tutorials currently.

yes but do they still bill you 170 000$ even if you have the free service??

This was actually very fun, great work here! There was a PC game called hamsterball that I really enjoyed a long time ago; this brought back memories.

Beautiful work, well done. It also made me remember a game I played a long time ago called Ballance[1]. Weird how memory works like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballance_(video_game)

I have to say, this is perfect execution. Now, if cloudflare made an equally great Oxyd inspired game the marble game sentimentalist edge computing nerds among us would be content.

Wow, this is nice. I don't know, but is it possible for us to study code for this? I would love to see how all of this is built.

I can understand you might have commercial obligation, so hoping Netlify can make this public :)

The controls don't seem to work for me. AWSD, only up and down work, unless I try to go diagonally, then it just gets "stuck" moving forever. Arrow keys no directions work unless I hold multiple keys down at once, then it also gets stuck moving.

M1 macbook pro, Arc browser

Really smooth, clean work. Didn't get a chance to monitor memory and network, but seemed pretty light, kudos!

That is very cute. But even after hitting all the white dots, it's not clear what their product is? A web framework? Hosting? Cloud services?

15 mins 31 secs, including reading all the promo material.

That's quite fun! I didn't know about "Marble Madness", but it reminded me of Cuboro [1], a (hardware!) toy that consists wooden blocks and allows people to create quite complicated marble runs that look very very similar to this game.

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuboro

This is absolutely amazing! Very well executed, congrats!!

I was absolutely terrified at first that falling off would have me start again from the beginning, so I was very careful. Once I did fall and come back where I was I grew bolder which made it more fun. Maybe that should be advertised somewhere.

(I'm still unsure what Netlify exactly is or what it does but this will make me want to find out!)

Very nice way to show off some of the history of Netlify while making it fun. Congrats on 5m.

Interesting. This consistently crashes my chrome browser whenever I get to the first glowing white checkpoint. But it's not like any crash I've seen before, the page reverts to a google search result I was on this morning. And the whole page is flickering white. That tab was closed long ago, but it seems something in this gets back to that state in memory, maybe a buffer overflow somewhere or something?

While on the google search result, the music from the game is still playing. If I open a new tab, the title of this tab changes from the google title to the netlify one, and vice versa if I change back.

I've been enjoying the quality and aesthetics of your studio's work. I would love for you to build a complete game or a longer experience, rather than only for marketing. I love where art and programming intersect. I would love to be able to create experiences like this myself one day.

I am very curious how the physics feel realy-wordly for the most part at the mathematical level. Are there existing algos that define the gravitational pull of the "Facts" spots or was there a lot of tweaking?

The 45 degree rotation does require more dual input than I care for which makes me wonder if that is a design choice.

Cute game. A lot more forgiving than Marble Madness though.

Needs a good enemy marble to come crack you and hammers too.

On chapter 2 I liked figuring out how to skip an entire section.

On chapter 3 I fell through the checkerboard immediately the first time; this seems like a bug.

On chapter 4 there are enough paths that it's possible to get slightly lost and not know which way you're supposed to follow the line.

On chapter 5 it's possible to fall onto an isolated island (the pink cube, under the lip) and get trapped forever. I would suggest making "only blue saves your position" a consistent rule rather than the current randomness. At this point I gave up and didn't want to try again from scratch.

Thank you so much. This is a great game for my 6yo, it made his day! He loved it. We spent months looking for web games for 6yo without ads, dark patterns and distracting details, but this was the first one that really fit. I wish there would be more similar games.

There's an easy shortcut in the second level past the climb on the pink pipe and before you climb the ramp where you can jump to the semi-circle on the lower platform on the other side. Love it!

That's really great!

The one game that I used to love, but never got translated into the modern world, is Oxyd[0], which was later re-released (in a fashion) as Enigma[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyd

[1] https://www.nongnu.org/enigma/

This is so cool, it feels great! The ball has the "feel" of a putty ball, bouncy but not a lot just enough. Probably a lot of thought went into this and it shows.

Great fun and very polished! I'd love to try this with accelerometer based controls.

Got stuck in a re-spawn loop : some collision detection failed in level 4 at the start of a standard 30° incline, the ball fell through, and was re-spawned at the same place resulting in falling again, locking me in loop.

Incredibly cool! Also, I had no idea how early I was to Netlify. I guessed something closer to 1 million, but apparently I was one of the first 5,000.

Brilliant game! I know it probably won't happen, but I would loove to see the source for this.

The ASDF controls are absolutely backwards while the cursor controls work.

Alright, alright. Where are the speedrunning leaderboards for this ?

Neat. I loved Marble Madness. It was one of the first games I got for my Amiga, back in the late 80's!

Nice job! You just need to have it so if the marble exceeds a certain Y velocity threshold that it shatters and a dust pan appears to sweep it up.

I love your work, especially browserquest!

Its been a long time since someone built something like this for the web. Praystation was a long time ago. No one has really followed up since then.

Hopefully constructive: Touch controls. If finger is lifted off, even for a second, new "center" is registered, which makes it quite hard to control without looking where the"center" is. Nice soundtrack, quite relaxing.

Great game! On mobile, feels like the joystick is a bit too sensitive. Ie: I move my finger a tiny amount and the ball goes flying.

What's your company called?

Fun game, but I soft-locked myself https://imgur.com/a/DHDSzPW Took a few tries to get there, but I don't think there's a way out

Gives me nostalgia for Gyroscope: https://youtu.be/T3RtojpRc2M?si=nkDpJtJ_lzs5xOP8

I wish I had code access to this, I would make a multiplayer mode using https://docs.joinplayroom.com/usage/threejs (my project)

I’ve heard people claim they beat the original marble madness, but I don’t believe them.

Super fun. Loved the rubbery sound design.

I’d want to watch the CEO host a speed run stream.

Minor -- the date on the Riot Games video "stop point" is likely wrong. It says 2024, but based on the timeline it should be 2023.

i got a few questions:

- you say it's built with three.js but you also use rapier. How does that work / integrate? I see one is JS frontend thing, the other rust engine

- how did you design levels, with what?

Great work. Are there any plans to convert some of the code to OSS?

Question unrelated to the game specifically - how does Netlify quantify the number of developers? How does it know/guess that it is 5 million?

Could you explain more on:

> The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view using CSS 3D transforms for a seamless integration with the 3D view.

Maybe a simple example of this with code?

Hello, really amazing work, well done! Just one curious question: have you made the background music yourself? if not, can I know the name?

Have you considered using R3F for this project? Also curious, why did you implement a custom renderer pipeline?

Nice, I did manage to get a respawn point where it immediately died causing a loop. On Elevation.

Still have no idea what netlify is or does.

There's a glitch in the velocity level. My marble keeps respawing and the game is stuck in a refresh loop

This is great! Fantastic work. You should port a game like this to steamdeck, it would be a huge hit!

Speedrun any% category coming soon?

Would love a multiplayer PvP version of this, a la Fall Guys.

Nice game, although I would expect to be able to use the gyroscope on mobile devices.

This is fantastic!.

Time to start speed running!

This is a really neat concept! Thanks for sharing.

That is really well done, congratulations :-)

personally couldnt care less about netlify but still played all 5 levels cause they were just fun, kudos

does anybody remember the name of the board game that you turned knobs on the outside of the box to tilt on the x/y axis to drive the marble around the board?

It needs more gravity for the marble to roll down slopes better.

this gives me an idea... what if you keep everything about the game the same but change it to hjkl navigation for vim learners?

I like it. I will share it with my friends.

So uh, don't try to make the jump from the pink elevator to the solitary pink cube on the last level. If you make it, you're stuck there forever! (I thought it would be a skill jump to an easter egg)

Pretty fun simple little game!

This is fun but it's buggy. I randomly glitch out and get forced to respawn :(

Phone gets hot fast

On iOS, sometimes it scrolls the page and pressing and holding opens a weird right click magnifier and releasing it a share option on the top left?

Those jarring little things seem to just never disappear from modern browser games.

Beyond that it‘s amazingly fluid.

That was fun, thanks!

This is amazing!

It's buggy. I got stuck in the blue "pool" in the last stage, under one of the green ramps.

I'm here just for the game.

If you move fast enough, you can glitch the ball against the slides and get stuck.

I got stuck in the second chapter. Went into a tube leading to a spiraling green slide and my ball reset... to the interior of the block. Oh well, cool project.

Very fun. I played all the levels. Thanks for sharing.

Well, I'd love to know what Netlify does, but...

#1. I could not find pricing anywhere.

#2. The "ROI calculator" steered me to enter in my name, e-mail, and phone number. I don't want to sign up to get spam from a salesman just to find out the basics about some tool or platform.

#3. Wikipedia's page for Netlify has a content warning that the content appears to be an ad brochure, but at least it said this:

"Netlify is a remote-first cloud computing company that offers a development platform that includes build, deploy, and serverless backend services for web applications and dynamic websites.

The company enables building, deploying, and scaling websites whose source files are stored in the version control system Git and then generated into static web content files served via a content delivery network."

Still have no idea what Netlify does (beyond what I can already do with git with a few clicks), or if it's right for our team, or if we can even afford it.

The Marble game was quite fun, however...

#4. The main thing that stuck in my mind from the little "milestones" about Netlify was that they changed their logo. This may seem significant to the Netlify team, but is completely irrelevant to the rest of us.

#5. The second thing was that they "bought Squirrel, an open source"... it is rather dystopian to hear that someone "bought" an open source platform.

Since we have a few Netlify people posting here, please feel free to correct my ignorance or point me in the right direction.

Netlify CEO here.

I spotted Little Workshop when I saw https://equinox.space/ on Hacker News and noticed it was running on Netlify. Loved the fluidness, speed and art direction of a game running directly in the browser and working smoothly on my phone.

Immediately thought of them when we started thinking about a 5 million developer celebration and reached out. Love the result :)

So i have to say i saw the headline on the frontpage and clicked the game before reading the post.

I have no idea who netifly is... and thought lets have a fun time playing.

While the game is visually well made, i gave it 3 attemps and all 3 times my ball dissapeared at some point into the floor and got permastuck. :/