I’m Not a Robot

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall Reception & Design

  • Many commenters found the game highly creative, funny, and polished, with praise for the escalating difficulty and variety across 48 levels.
  • Several said it’s the author’s best work yet and enjoyed how familiar CAPTCHA tropes are pushed to absurd extremes.
  • Others bounced off early, describing it as tedious or anxiety-inducing, similar to real CAPTCHAs.

Difficulty Curve & Memorable Levels

  • Progression is widely praised: easy hooks early, then increasingly weird and challenging tasks.
  • Common “stopping points”:
    • Level 4 (vegetables vs fruits, Mr. Potato Head, corn, avocado) caused confusion and philosophical debates about what a “vegetable” is.
    • Level 11 (Where’s Waldo) and later panorama search (e.g. “guitar cat”) were tough, especially on mobile without zoom.
    • Circle-drawing (17) and rhythm game (47, “Din Don Dan”) were major skill checks; some used remapped keys, media controls, or JS cheats.
    • Chess vs “Deep Blue” (44) stumped weaker chess players; repeated failures gradually give extra queens.
    • Empire State Building floor selection and stock-market/math puzzles felt grindy to some.

Technical Issues & UX Friction

  • Reports of bugs or incompatibilities: no grid on level 2 in older Firefox, broken circle-drawing on some setups, webcam level flaky on mobile/GrapheneOS, stuck verification screens, level 15 not verifying.
  • Some puzzles felt unfairly sensitive (stop-sign pixels) or ambiguous (what counts as part of a sign, or which AI images to pick).
  • Case-sensitive text entry and tasks that are arguably easier for bots (perfect circles, Waldo, math) drew criticism as “unfair to humans.”

AI, Cheating, and Meta-Humor

  • Many used external tools: LLMs to find Waldo, classify vegetables, solve math, explain Minecraft recipes; Stockfish to beat chess; console scripts/localStorage edits for the rhythm level or skipping ahead.
  • The “reverse Turing test” level is often “solved” by jailbreaking the embedded AI with system-prompt tricks or nonsense slang, highlighting how brittle such checks are.
  • Some appreciated the satire of modern CAPTCHA systems, data extraction (camera, geolocation), and Cloudflare’s real CAPTCHA appearing when downloading the “human certificate.”