Show HN: A Marble Madness-inspired WebGL game we built for Netlify

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Gameplay, Feel, and Design

  • Many found the game very fun, polished, and faithful to Marble Madness-style gameplay, with praise for level design, shortcuts, and “feel” of the marble.
  • Physics and friction are widely praised; drifting and rolling feel intuitive. Some compare the feel favorably to commercial titles.
  • Several wish it were a full standalone game with more levels, puzzles, enemies, and an editor or user-made levels.
  • Some players deliberately try to avoid the white info dots, treating it as a “0% info” or “avoid the dots” challenge.

Bugs, Glitches, and Difficulty

  • Frequent reports of collision issues: falling through floors, getting stuck in walls, tubes, or ramps, and infinite respawn loops.
  • A few specific soft-lock spots are identified (e.g., pink cubes and certain ramps on later levels).
  • One user reports a severe GPU-like browser flicker/crash behavior.
  • Some feel gravity could be stronger; others think current tuning keeps difficulty reasonable.

Controls and UX

  • Keyboard controls are generally praised, including correct handling of non-QWERTY layouts via the Keyboard API.
  • Some users report broken controls in certain browsers.
  • Mobile joystick is described as too sensitive; touch gestures on iOS sometimes trigger page scrolls, selection magnifier, or back navigation.
  • Requests appear for gyroscope / accelerometer controls, but these are not planned.

Technology and Implementation

  • Rendering uses Three.js with a custom render pipeline and shaders; physics uses Rapier via WebAssembly; audio uses Howler.
  • Levels are authored in Unity, exported to FBX, then processed in Blender scripts and exported as GLTF. Triangle-mesh colliders are generated from GLTF.
  • CSS3DRenderer is used to overlay 2D DOM content with CSS 3D transforms.
  • Unity WebGL was avoided due to lack of official mobile support and load-time concerns.

Open Source, Learning, and Documentation

  • Many request open-sourcing the project as a high-quality reference; creators say there are no plans but may publish behind-the-scenes material.
  • Discussion highlights a perceived gap between toy Three.js examples and polished, cross-platform WebGL experiences.

Marketing and Netlify Discussion

  • Many praise the ad as tasteful and non-intrusive; some still ignore or actively avoid the company info.
  • Multiple commenters say they still don’t clearly understand what Netlify does or find pricing opaque, comparing it to other hosting/Jamstack platforms.