Cursor Camp

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction & nostalgia

  • Strongly positive reception; many found it delightful, cozy, and a rare example of “fun on the internet.”
  • Triggers nostalgia for Club Penguin, Flash-era interactive stories, Living Books CD-ROMs, and older web experiments like multi-cursor sites.
  • Some contrast it favorably with big-budget “metaverse” efforts.

Game design & mechanics

  • Mouse-hijack mechanic is widely praised as clever: cursor can go “behind” objects, slow in water, be carried by rivers, shrink with distance, teleport through doors, etc.
  • Some dislike that mouse movement is reimplemented: very low sensitivity on some setups, especially Firefox and certain DPIs; others argue this control is essential to the game’s feel.
  • Specific minigames called out: lazy river, slides, beach volleyball (with timing tips), car racetrack with correct over/under Z-ordering, piano, soccer.

Badges, secrets & Easter eggs

  • Players chase 9 visible badges plus hints at a possible “secret 10th” (unclear if it exists).
  • ROT13 “badge guide” is shared, with some discussion about spoiler handling.
  • Hidden seashells are a common sticking point; tips given on last shells’ locations.
  • Treehouse book, radio, and cave “convergence point” spark puzzle speculation; inspection of source suggests no extra hidden rooms, though audio messages and star map hints remain partly unresolved.

Social & multiplayer experiences

  • Many report spontaneous group activities: dance parties, piano concerts, beach volleyball, improvised soccer, flamingo expeditions.
  • Several comment on surprising feelings of human connection through just cursors.

Technical issues & platform differences

  • Reports of lag, stutter, or very slow cursor on Firefox (especially touchpads), while Chrome generally works better.
  • Some motion sickness, mobile overheating, a bug on phones where pseudo-cursor disappears, and one user’s Wi-Fi dying after a minute.
  • Cookie banner is hard to click because of cursor hijack; banner itself criticized as overly complex.

Privacy, corporate & implementation notes

  • Site is blocked on some corporate networks, framed as “productivity loss.”
  • Questions about country detection; answers suggest GeoIP and/or browser locale with occasional inaccuracies.
  • Curiosity about the multiplayer tech stack and use of the animation tool Rive; a few share similar or related cursor experiments.