Show HN: Neil the Seal Game
Comments
Jordan-117
rladd
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?
dalemhurley
fixed, must be pre-exploded, made it harder to explode a car.
dalemhurley
I am thinking of changing that cars only explode on slams, so it is easier to nudge on mobile. Desktop is much easier.
Jordan-117
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!
dalemhurley
Done
dalemhurley
fixed
robbiejs
Cool game! Reminds me of the untitled Goose Game, bullying citizens, is that a genre? It should definitely be a genre.
dalemhurley
Untitled Goose Game is an inspiration, UGG is such a beautiful game with such amazing attention to detail.
efilife
Goat simulator as well
dalemhurley
Goat Simulator is such good game and a lot more intense, I want Neil The Seal to be more chilled.
byhemechi
i regret to inform you that we drive on the left in australia
dalemhurley
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_sky
I regret to inform you but this inst Australia it’s Tasmania. /s
dalemhurley
I should add mushrooms!
dalemhurley
added
jumploops
My preschooler loves the Untitled Goose Game, please vibe-port this to the Switch (:
dalemhurley
Yes - my kids love that game too, and I should.
latexr
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.
dalemhurley
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 :)
retentionissue
Loving the Cleveland Brown reference (if that's the intention) of people falling out of knocked down houses in their bath tubs.
dalemhurley
I didn't know the reference, I wanted to add funny elements to destroying the houses.
retentionissue
Well it's funny nonetheless and a nice little homage to Family Guy. Also, how does the car dunking function? I've dropped two cars into pools now whilst on fire and still no achievement :(
SCPlayz7000
In the game's beginning, the water doesnt render very well for me. Perhaps it's because I have a lower-end device.
MarcScott
You inspired me to make one for kids to create in Scratch
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/neil-the-seal/0
chao-
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.
dalemhurley
Cones have been added. Sound improvements implemented.
dalemhurley
Yes I need to add the cones.
davewasthere
I can't blow up the servo, even though I've totally wrecked it.
dalemhurley
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.
davewasthere
nvm. One little pole did the trick
dalemhurley
fixed it to be a much better experience.
UrMomsRobotLovr
This is great. I don't know how to get chain reaction but I have already spent a decent amount of my work say knocking off achievements....
UrMomsRobotLovr
Got it. Need more achievements please haha.
Thanks for this!
dalemhurley
Absolutely, I honestly thought it would be my kids and a few people into indie would like it, Cloudflare says there has been over 50k unique visitors which is pretty amazing, and a good sign that it could be more.
dalemhurley
push a burning car next to another car.
rickydroll
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.
SCPlayz7000
Lovely little game! I also appreciate the meme references.
dalemhurley
I wanted to have lots of laughs and Tasmanian references
mrspacejam
Brilliant, I love Neil, great idea to immortalize him.
dalemhurley
Thank you,
HanClinto
This is pretty hilarious. :D Feels like a combination of Untitled Goose Game and Goat Simulator. Vibe-coded? It's pretty impressive.
dalemhurley
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.
YPCrumble
This is great! Whats the tech stack?
I started thumping cars but then got into an infinite spiral I couldn’t get out of.
dalemhurley
three.js and Vite, very basic, I set out originally to make a game where Neil knocks over cones and grew it from there. If I was to start again I would use a game engine as it has scaled further than I intended.
What do you mean by "infinite spiral"?
benj111
Well I was deemed to have pushed 1 car. Pushing them slamming 5 more didn't get me past the first level.
SCPlayz7000
Is there a way to disable shadows?
E-Machine
Great work! I had some rendering issues with some part of the houses' roofs not showing
dalemhurley
thank you, that has been fixed.
jackvalentine
Cars are driving on the wrong side of the road - presumably in terror of His Neilness!
dalemhurley
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.
jackvalentine
Now driving on the correct side of the road, but wrong side of the roundabout!
Neil’s reign of terror knows no limits.
protocolture
Combines my 2 favourite things, cutely annoying animals, and destroying tasmania.
dalemhurley
LOL too true!
sheldon7337
Not what i expected, but kind of cute.
dalemhurley
what did you expect?
Retr0id
I love the voice lines
Retr0id
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.
dalemhurley
yes agree. pools need to be bigger and cars need to be easier to push.
dalemhurley
fixed now
dalemhurley
yeah, me too, lots of laughs.
purple-leafy
Cute but your volume and camera buttons don’t work at all
ymolodtsov
Neil broke them already damnit
dalemhurley
Good on ya Neil.
dalemhurley
was that on desktop or mobile?
purple-leafy
Mobile iPhone 15, also the action button is really slow to react
dalemhurley
thank you, hopefully it is fixed now.
FantasyLabai
Cool game! Love free web games.
dalemhurley
Me too
BSTRhino
haha this is cool :) What made you choose to code this as a webgame? In either case, good idea much easier to share
dalemhurley
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.
jezzamon
I can tell this is at least partially vibe coded... Out of curiosity, how much did you use AI for this?
dalemhurley
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.
worthless-trash
Missing bollards.
doodpants
I think I saw Jesus, because a guy ran right across the surface of a swimming pool.
dalemhurley
yeah the NPCs need a bit more attention.
alvaro_l_torres
love it
infinitebit
i love this. i don’t understand why web games like this aren’t more prevalent
Benjamin_Dobell
They are. There's a LOT of web games on itch.io. It's just the typical challenge with over saturated markets: publicity.
purple-leafy
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.
dalemhurley
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.
adecoster
funny one!
dalemhurley
Thank you
crowd51
Lol definitely a cute game. Good job
dalemhurley
Thank you, I hope it made you smile.
finecode
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!
dalemhurley
Thank you, hopefully the new changes make it better.
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.