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dalemhurley
Show HN: Neil the Seal Game neiltheseal.app

Neil the seal now has a game to destroy Battery Point.


Jordan-11710 hours ago

Cute! But the car challenges in Tier 8 feel undoable -- they're a bear to "steer" and can't seem to go more than a short distance before bursting into flames.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

I am thinking of changing that cars only explode on slams, so it is easier to nudge on mobile. Desktop is much easier.

Jordan-1177 hours ago

I played on desktop and it seemed pretty impossible tbh. They veer around unpredictably when bumped, and explode long before you can plausibly bump them into a pool. Limiting that to slams would definitely help though!

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

Done

rladd7 hours ago

I nudged a car exactly into the pool and got no credit for it. It had exploded already though, so perhaps that was the problem?

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

fixed, must be pre-exploded, made it harder to explode a car.

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

fixed

MarcScott3 hours ago

You inspired me to make one for kids to create in Scratch

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/neil-the-seal/0

rickydroll2 hours ago

On my desktop, On Firefox, I just got a uniform blue screen. On Chrome, I could turn left or right, but that was all. The W, S, and C keys didn't work.

byhemechi8 hours ago

i regret to inform you that we drive on the left in australia

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

Fixed.

Even worse is I am Australian, I spent a lot of time and concentrating on the left, discussed it with my wife and kids, yet somehow I still got it wrong.

pelagic_sky6 hours ago

I regret to inform you but this inst Australia it’s Tasmania. /s

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

I should add mushrooms!

dalemhurleyop3 hours ago

added

jumploops10 hours ago

My preschooler loves the Untitled Goose Game, please vibe-port this to the Switch (:

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Yes - my kids love that game too, and I should.

jezzamon7 hours ago

I can tell this is at least partially vibe coded... Out of curiosity, how much did you use AI for this?

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

I have been building games since the late 90's, this is the first one I used AI Assisted coding, I wouldn't call it vibe coded as I am in control of the code, the implementation, the decisions, and approval.

I am using Codex GPT-5.5 $20p/m.

chao-10 hours ago

Sound isn't working in Firefox on Linux, but otherwise very fun. The only thing it's missing are Neil's favorite traffic cones ;)

Also glad that Neil is getting the protection he needs (and the public as well) despite the media attention.

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

Cones have been added. Sound improvements implemented.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Yes I need to add the cones.

davewasthere10 hours ago

I can't blow up the servo, even though I've totally wrecked it.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

yeah, quite a few people have made the same comment. I should normalise the damage across the different elements so a single element does stop it from being destroyed.

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

fixed it to be a much better experience.

davewasthere10 hours ago

nvm. One little pole did the trick

E-Machine7 hours ago

Great work! I had some rendering issues with some part of the houses' roofs not showing

dalemhurleyopan hour ago

thank you, that has been fixed.

mrspacejam10 hours ago

Brilliant, I love Neil, great idea to immortalize him.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Thank you,

HanClinto11 hours ago

This is pretty hilarious. :D Feels like a combination of Untitled Goose Game and Goat Simulator. Vibe-coded? It's pretty impressive.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

I have been occasionally building indie games since the 90's, so a bit of experience mixed with AI coding Assistant. Some things AI really struggled on, others it blitz.

jackvalentine9 hours ago

Cars are driving on the wrong side of the road - presumably in terror of His Neilness!

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Completely correct! It was late, I even checked with my wife, she told me the left. Darn, I went the wrong way. Will fix it.

jackvalentine3 hours ago

Now driving on the correct side of the road, but wrong side of the roundabout!

Neil’s reign of terror knows no limits.

purple-leafy9 hours ago

Cute but your volume and camera buttons don’t work at all

ymolodtsov7 hours ago

Neil broke them already damnit

dalemhurleyop5 hours ago

Good on ya Neil.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

was that on desktop or mobile?

purple-leafy9 hours ago

Mobile iPhone 15, also the action button is really slow to react

Retr0id10 hours ago

I love the voice lines

Retr0id10 hours ago

I got stuck on the "push a car into a pool" quest, even with the car directly on top of a pool it didn't go in. The car-pushing physics seem buggy, the rotation direction seems opposite to what it should be.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

yes agree. pools need to be bigger and cars need to be easier to push.

dalemhurleyop4 hours ago

fixed now

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

yeah, me too, lots of laughs.

BSTRhino10 hours ago

haha this is cool :) What made you choose to code this as a webgame? In either case, good idea much easier to share

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

I wanted to create a proof of concept and used three.js a few years ago, Codex made the POC much easier and faster to build.

benj1116 hours ago

Well I was deemed to have pushed 1 car. Pushing them slamming 5 more didn't get me past the first level.

latexr7 hours ago

I wanted to like it but found it immediately frustrating on mobile:

* The joystick is too sensitive, so it’s hard to keep a straight line, wobbling everywhere instead. The camera makes it worse. I felt that if I kept going I might get motion sickness.

* Despite moving both cars out of the way and getting through, it always marked just one. Took me three resets and had to move Neil back to properly push them and get that done.

* I have played other browser 3D games on mobile but this was the fastest my phone has ever heat up. I didn’t even know it could become this hot this fast, to the point it’s uncomfortable to hold.

dalemhurleyop3 hours ago

Joystick has been improved, I just dampened it down a little. I will look at the cars, I deliberately added the back and front sensitivity in an early version, it is okay on desktop horrible on mobile. Battery improvements implemented dropping the load by 90% with a minor change :)

worthless-trash8 hours ago

Missing bollards.

protocolture9 hours ago

Combines my 2 favourite things, cutely annoying animals, and destroying tasmania.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

LOL too true!

infinitebit10 hours ago

i love this. i don’t understand why web games like this aren’t more prevalent

Benjamin_Dobell9 hours ago

They are. There's a LOT of web games on itch.io. It's just the typical challenge with over saturated markets: publicity.

purple-leafy9 hours ago

They are incredibly hard to market, I built a web game and it’s so hard to get traction lol

And it’s quite a bit more polished than most web games. Too complex though so I’m fixing that.

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Competition. Marketing. Expectations.

In the 1990's and early 2000's I loved building web and flash games, people had lower expectations, getting notice was easy (StumbleUpon etc) and there wasn't a lot other choices.

crowd519 hours ago

Lol definitely a cute game. Good job

dalemhurleyop9 hours ago

Thank you, I hope it made you smile.

finecode2 days ago

Fun game! One quick piece of UX feedback: when adjusting the direction, the entire screen rotates along with it, which makes me feel a bit dizzy. It might be helpful to have an option to lock the screen orientation or smooth out the rotation. Great work overall!

dalemhurleyop3 hours ago

Thank you, hopefully the new changes make it better.

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