First screen, captured 8 days ago. Open the video.

Being a kid making games in the early 2000s

What HN thinks

A warm bath of nostalgia, lightly scented with GOTO 10 and tiled purple backgrounds.

Self-taught struggle was formative
Many recall hacking through QBasic, ZZT, Game Maker and cygwin toolchains without knowing what variables, arrays or linkers were, and value that unguided learning.
Fond memories of hobby engines
Commenters reminisce about ZZT, OHRRPGE, Klik'n Play/Games Factory, RPG Maker and BYOND, along with their forum communities.
Retro site design: charming or unreadable
Some found the frames and patterned backgrounds hard to read, especially on phones, while others said the look perfectly fits the story.

Consensus: Most agree early-2000s amateur game-making was a joyful, formative experience, even if the tools were clunky.

Recommended in the comments

Hypnospace Outlaw (product): Recommended as hours of the same nostalgic web content as the article, with great music.
False Skies ↗ (product): One commenter called it possibly their favorite JRPG ever.
Museum of ZZT ↗ (service): Shared as the hub for the ZZT community many commenters grew up in.
OHRRPGCE ↗ (tool): Remembered as a fun, accessible way to make Final Fantasy-style games.
Chants of Sennaar (product): Cited as a game where puzzles are integrated into worldbuilding.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 8 days ago.

Points: 98
Comments: 41
Best rank: #15
Posted: 2026-11-05 by farmerbb
Category: Gaming

game-development the-games-factory clickteam indie-games jay-tholen hypnospace-outlaw memoir

All captures:

Full page

Captured 8 days ago. Click for the whole screenshot. The page is longer than 25,000px, so the screenshot stops there: read the rest on jaytholen.net ↗

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