Starcraft: Ashfall

(starcraft-shooter-2026.pages.dev)

263 points | by debo_ 22 hours ago

37 comments

  • ggnore7452 1 hour 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.

    • randfur 27 minutes ago
      I've never played those mobile ad games and this scratched my curiosity. Now you're telling me they don't deliver and I'm curious again, how do they fail their delivery?
    • debo_ 1 hour ago
      Hi I posted it. I'm just a guy in the chat who saw it on YouTube.
      • ggnore7452 1 hour ago
        Thank you so much for sharing it, really made my day!
  • gbnwl 4 hours ago
    Reddit thread from about a month ago where creator introduced this: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1wqdabw/i_made_t...
  • neko_ranger 20 hours ago
    Wow someone made the youtube ad game!
    • ajkjk 2 minutes ago
      it's funny that everyone has had the same experience with that ad
    • butlike 4 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 3 hours ago
        A shame if they don't recreate the Lost Viking game from Wings of Liberty itself.
    • dxcqcv 19 hours ago
      cool, give me more
  • bulbar 15 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.

    • p2detar 3 hours 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 2 hours ago
        I got around 42. Protos commander felt stronger for the effort.
    • andai 4 hours ago
      It's like cookie clicker, with less clicking and more blood!
    • hackyhacky 1 hour ago
      It basically has the same gameplay as ProgressQuest, an adventure game that was famously created to minimize user involvement.

      https://progressquest.com/play/newguy.html

    • AngryData 4 hours ago
      Once you get high enough you can switch commanders which gives additional upgrades and active powers.
  • an0malous 3 hours ago
    I've been seeing a lot of Pokemon games recently as well, are companies just not enforcing their copyright/trademarks anymore?
    • nilamo 3 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.
      • lelanthran 2 hours 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 2 hours ago
          It's a legal issue, and the legal part has always been bullshit regardless of which specific label happens to apply.
          • Blikkentrekker 1 hour ago
            If you don't make copyright contagious under derivative works then people can just change a few things to get around copyright.

            Also, do you really want a world where big film studios can just adapt books of writers without compensating them?

            • Taek 23 minutes ago
              Is 20-30 authors per year making it big really worth the massive suffocation that prevents tens of thousands of authors from writing the stories that are in their hearts?
            • denkmoon 32 minutes ago
              They do that anyway today. You really think authors, book writing being the lucrative industry for writers that it is, are suing Universal/Sony/whoever to prevent their IP being infringed?

              I do really want a world however where fans/communities can riff on and make derivative works of culturally relevant material without being legally nuked from orbit. The last few weeks have been amazing in the gaming world, creativity abounds and there seem to be no limits as to what we can redesign to our own whims.

          • syspec 2 hours 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.

            • nilamo 1 hour ago
              I've always found that defending laws that don't benefit people to be a stange attitude on a place called "hacker news".

              Creative people should be able to create. Trademark/copyright laws, protecting assets for the great-grandchildren of who actually created the art, has never been a positive. The only people who benefit, are themselves not creative (or else they would create, instead of defending "rights" and "image").

              • egypturnash 31 minutes ago
                How about protecting assets for the people who made the art in the first place, geeze.

                And seriously wtf why shouldn't, like, Jack Kirby's grandkids get a share of the huge bounty of stuff he created for Marvel, but Elon Musk gets to inherit emerald mines from his dad?

            • fl4regun 1 hour ago
              >but how is using StarCraft and its assets in your random AI game okay? How is it not ok? What is the issue exactly? From what I can tell it's totally free, and has an indication it is a fan game on the bottom of the screen.
            • 59percentmore 1 hour 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 1 hour 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 1 hour 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.

      • steelframe 1 hour ago
        When it comes to copyright, I am not so optimistic. When the AI bubble bursts, the usual corporate interests will resurface with a vengeance.
      • deadbabe 3 hours ago
        Couldn’t they just use AI to sue at scale? No one should be too small to go after now.
        • creakingstairs 3 hours 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 3 hours ago
          Yeah the law firms just haven't caught up yet. But they will.
          • nilamo 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.

      • throwaway613746 3 hours ago
        [dead]
    • larodi 3 hours ago
      they may well be busy surviving AI induced chain reactions letting lots of people out of work.
    • ForHackernews 2 hours ago
      It's a totally original creation laundered through LLM derivative works.
  • mastax 20 hours ago
    Game basically plays itself but fun nonetheless
    • croon 12 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 11 hours ago
      The satisfying pop of the zerglings alone make it fun for me.
    • throwaway613746 3 hours ago
      [dead]
  • temp0826 3 hours 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)
    • pmarreck 20 minutes ago
      We need a tracker!
  • buf 20 hours ago
    Saw Starcraft, spent 30 minutes living the nostalgia playing this.
  • sharkjacobs 1 hour ago
    It's not a fun game, but it's cool anyway
  • nafey 20 hours ago
    Is this AI generated? Pretty impressive if that is the case
    • NorthernGulch 10 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
    • blueblock 20 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.
    • Carrok 39 minutes ago
      What does AI generated even mean, really? Because there is a pretty big difference between “make a star craft game” and a sequence of very specific small prompts to build it up. They are both AI generated, but will vary wildly in quality and implementation.
    • datsci_est_2015 20 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.
  • andai 4 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!)

  • butlike 4 hours ago
    It's nice to know Stimpack marines still roll face.
    • debo_ 4 hours ago
      Ahhhh yeahhhh
  • no-name-here 20 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.
    • itishappy 2 hours 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.
    • coralreef 4 hours ago
      controls aren't important, upgrade/tech choices are
  • j7ake 2 hours ago
    Game crashes when trying to fuse units
  • dmix 19 hours ago
    Great game. It took me way too long to figure out I could use keyboard to control the positioning instead of mouse.
  • dclaw 58 minutes ago
    Spectacular. Mad props.
  • marvstazar 20 hours ago
    I was wondering why there was a dragon there, is it from Wrath of the Lich King?
  • theogravity 4 hours ago
    That was pretty enjoyable. Definitely like the ads you see online but with IP people care about.
  • lai 3 hours ago
    So what's the meta?
    • gbnwl 14 minutes ago
      I like seige tanks
    • Noe2097 2 hours ago
      there is no meta but what we vibe
      • lai 2 hours 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.
  • tdhz77 20 hours ago
    Lots of fun! Wish StarCraft would come out every year
    • hirako2000 3 hours ago
      Too busy making the new StarCraft.
  • spicyusername 20 hours ago
    Ah, the music is so nostalgic. Really takes me back.
  • karim79 11 hours ago
    Cool game, but isn't this going to make blizzard bring out the big guns?
  • jmcdonald-ut 20 hours ago
    Great work on this, had a blast!
    • debo_ 20 hours ago
      I did not make this, for the record. I just found it.
  • kixpanganiban 19 hours ago
    Perfect, who needed to be productive anyways
  • seattle_spring 4 hours ago
    Holy moly, just hearing those sound effects gives me a giant wave of nostalgia.
  • ReptileMan 2 hours ago
    Big game hunters Terran vs 7PC zergs. Same feeling.
  • lofaszvanitt 9 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
  • lgessler 4 hours ago
    This is, respectfully, slop piggybacking on nostalgic associations with stolen assets.
    • lapetitejort 41 minutes ago
      Tale as old as time. The second half of what we now call the singular novel Don Quixote is actually the sequel to the original Don Quixote, published ten years later. In it the characters lament that someone published bootleg Don Quixote stories, which really happened!
    • pmarreck 17 minutes ago
      You must be the fun one at parties
  • noah640090 7 hours ago
    This was really fun!
  • gigel82 3 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...
  • johng 21 hours ago
    Really cool game. Spent about 30 minutes playing it. Very fun!
  • jonenst 3 hours ago
    Wake up, Hank. That game ain’t gonna play itself. Oh wait it does.
  • jdw64 4 hours ago
    nice game
  • cyh555 18 hours ago
    so nice!
  • bigwheels 2 hours ago
    See also: D2 Survivors https://d2survivors.lol/

    The AI games mashups are starting to heat up.

  • theylieeasieral 2 hours ago
    slop
  • pavluu 3 hours ago
    [dead]