ggnore7452 11 minutes ago

Wow, thanks to whoever posted this! I made this game.

Like many, I was frustrated there's no new StarCraft coming till 2030, so I half-jokingly made the mini-game those mobile ads always promise and never deliver. Something you can play with one hand, that your friends who've never played StarCraft can just pick up.(Turns out you can squeeze a lot of extra gameplay/design on top of it.)

Also, if you're going to copy Blizzard you might as well copy the whole package right, so there's a CG trailer too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVDao71LC7A

Honestly didn't expect people to grind this. I designed the endgame to be layer 50 and thought ppl can get at most ~70 if they really try, and somehow there are people on the leaderboard past 100 (without cheating). That's StarCraft players for you.

neko_ranger 18 hours ago

Wow someone made the youtube ad game!

  • dxcqcv 18 hours ago

    cool, give me more

  • butlike 3 hours ago

    There's also pinball and an asteroids-like game if you click the "Arcade" button next to where it says "Ashfall Crossing"

    • gs17 2 hours ago

      A shame if they don't recreate the Lost Viking game from Wings of Liberty itself.

bulbar 14 hours ago

Cool visuals, but doesn't count as a game for me. Can you do anything that make sense, except selecting the upgrade?

Could be a nice little game, though. Strip the IP and let the AI implement a bit more for the user to do.

  • andai 3 hours ago

    It's like cookie clicker, with less clicking and more blood!

  • AngryData 2 hours ago

    Once you get high enough you can switch commanders which gives additional upgrades and active powers.

  • p2detar 1 hour ago

    It’s actually very addicting once you play a couple of sessions. The scoreboard is crazy. Still don’t know how anyone makes it past wave (layer) 35-37.

    • nicce 26 minutes ago

      I got around 42. Protos commander felt stronger for the effort.

an0malous 2 hours ago

I've been seeing a lot of Pokemon games recently as well, are companies just not enforcing their copyright/trademarks anymore?

  • larodi 2 hours ago

    they may well be busy surviving AI induced chain reactions letting lots of people out of work.

  • nilamo 2 hours ago

    They can't sue everyone, comrade. AI tools will hopefully trigger a rewrite of what copyright means, it's always been silly that it prevents derivitive works.

    • deadbabe 1 hour ago

      Couldn’t they just use AI to sue at scale? No one should be too small to go after now.

      • creakingstairs 1 hour ago

        The court system is too bogged up as it is with the current load. So I guess we’d have to create some AI judges and lawyers :p

      • bhhaskin 1 hour ago

        Yeah the law firms just haven't caught up yet. But they will.

        • nilamo 58 minutes ago

          And when the judges get around to the case in 300 years after all the other ai court cases, we'll be beyond caring about the consequences.

        • Legend2440 29 minutes ago

          Law firms are cautious about AI tools, they got burned a couple years ago by hallucinated citations.

          Citing made-up cases sure looks like lying to the court, which is a punishable offense. Lawyers have been sanctioned, fined, and in one case received a 30-day license suspension.

    • lelanthran 1 hour ago

      > AI tools will hopefully trigger a rewrite of what copyright means,

      Maybe it will, but this ain't a copyright issues, it's a trademark issue.

      • nilamo 59 minutes ago

        It's a legal issue, and the legal part has always been bullshit regardless of which specific label happens to apply.

        • syspec 42 minutes ago

          Surprised to see this level of discourse here on HN, reads like a reddit comment.

          Copyright sucks, and Disney is bad etc, but how is using StarCraft and its assets in your random AI game okay?

          I mean, creators should be allowed to exert control over how their assets and brand are used.

          • 59percentmore 21 minutes ago

            >Copyright sucks, and Disney is bad etc, but how is using StarCraft and its assets in your random AI game okay?

            Because it's cool.

            • Supermancho 8 minutes ago

              The number of conglomerates has, unsurprisingly, continued to shrink. It's long overdue for a rethink. Maybe if the US political system ever stabilizes, we might get to it in a hundred years. Until then Copyright sucks and Disney is bad.

          • sharkjacobs 8 minutes ago

            > creators should be allowed to exert control over how their assets and brand are used

            I hate to be glib, but no they shouldn't.

            Creators should be allowed to create things and sell them. No one, whether the creator, or the company the creator worked for when they first created the thing, should be able to stop someone else from creating something.

  • ForHackernews 48 minutes ago

    It's a totally original creation laundered through LLM derivative works.

sharkjacobs 7 minutes ago

It's not a fun game, but it's cool anyway

temp0826 1 hour ago

This is the second (probably vibecoded?) game in the last few days that I've seen using blizzard ip (the other being d2survivors.lol)

mastax 18 hours ago

Game basically plays itself but fun nonetheless

  • croon 11 hours ago

    For 10-15 levels or so, then your upgrade choices start to matter.

    I only played through it once, but I'm convinced I'd do better on a second run, and a third, etc.

  • karim79 9 hours ago

    The satisfying pop of the zerglings alone make it fun for me.

buf 18 hours ago

Saw Starcraft, spent 30 minutes living the nostalgia playing this.

j7ake 1 hour ago

Game crashes when trying to fuse units

  • malfist 58 minutes ago

    You must build additional pylons

andai 3 hours ago

Fun game.

I have to pick a new upgrade every 3 seconds. I thought they did that to stave off boredom, but actually it increases decision fatigue. (I just wanna shoot!)

no-name-here 18 hours ago

I did not touch the controls at all, and I still won with zero losses on the first level - that does not inspire confidence.

  • coralreef 3 hours ago

    controls aren't important, upgrade/tech choices are

  • itishappy 56 minutes ago

    In snowball games like this, losing a unit marks the beginning of the end. As such, you really have to go out of your way to lose units in the tutorial.

nafey 18 hours ago

Is this AI generated? Pretty impressive if that is the case

  • blueblock 18 hours ago

    Definitely smells like ai. I don't think a human would spend so much time on the graphics and effects and not have streamlined the gameplay a bit.

  • datsci_est_2015 18 hours ago

    Assets are very easily duplicated because of the editor that ships with the game. Not as impressive as it would be if it were other games with more tightly-locked assets.

  • NorthernGulch 8 hours ago

    The opposite would be correct. AI generated is the norm, and it would be impressive to spend xxx hours creating this when AI can do it in 4 hours

dmix 17 hours ago

Great game. It took me way too long to figure out I could use keyboard to control the positioning instead of mouse.

lai 1 hour ago

So what's the meta?

  • Noe2097 1 hour ago

    there is no meta but what we vibe

    • lai 59 minutes ago

      I'm noticing that armor pen is super important later on. However, eventually get rekt.. I'm curious how the top person got to the layer he is in now. I'm stuck at layer 26.

butlike 3 hours ago

It's nice to know Stimpack marines still roll face.

  • debo_ 2 hours ago

    Ahhhh yeahhhh

theogravity 2 hours ago

That was pretty enjoyable. Definitely like the ads you see online but with IP people care about.

marvstazar 18 hours ago

I was wondering why there was a dragon there, is it from Wrath of the Lich King?

tdhz77 18 hours ago

Lots of fun! Wish StarCraft would come out every year

  • hirako2000 2 hours ago

    Too busy making the new StarCraft.

spicyusername 19 hours ago

Ah, the music is so nostalgic. Really takes me back.

ReptileMan 54 minutes ago

Big game hunters Terran vs 7PC zergs. Same feeling.

karim79 9 hours ago

Cool game, but isn't this going to make blizzard bring out the big guns?

jmcdonald-ut 18 hours ago

Great work on this, had a blast!

  • debo_ 18 hours ago

    I did not make this, for the record. I just found it.

kixpanganiban 18 hours ago

Perfect, who needed to be productive anyways

gigel82 2 hours ago

Fun, but... how is this not already taken down by copyright strikes? I mean straight rips of audio assets, music, 3d assets, graphics, even the damn name...

lofaszvanitt 7 hours ago

A mix of everything. Stolen from everywhere. We have AI, but people are still the bottleneck. They lack creativity and ideas :D. lol

seattle_spring 2 hours ago

Holy moly, just hearing those sound effects gives me a giant wave of nostalgia.

jonenst 1 hour ago

Wake up, Hank. That game ain’t gonna play itself. Oh wait it does.

johng 20 hours ago

Really cool game. Spent about 30 minutes playing it. Very fun!

lgessler 2 hours ago

This is, respectfully, slop piggybacking on nostalgic associations with stolen assets.

jdw64 2 hours ago

nice game