Ah, thanks for the feedback. Can you give me an idea of areas that I should improve? I tried to keep it simple, you should just be able to select a game and play, but maybe there is a pain point that I don’t notice anymore now that I’ve gotten used to it.

Thanks! What do you mean about smartphones, can you share what phone OS and browser you are using? It should work on Android (Firefox/Chrome) and iOS (Safari), I consider mobile to be just as important as desktop. Ah, I remember some FOSS mobile browsers have WebAssembly disabled… here is an older version compiled to JS instead of WASM, let me know if that works: https://alexbarry.net/dev/games/reversi-ai2-no-wasm-2025-01-05/

In hindsight I should add some browser side detection of if WASM is supported, then show a warning at least, if not redirect to a JS version.

And yes, it’s all one big code base (https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames), each game is pretty small though, maybe 500-1000 lines of Lua on average: https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames/tree/main/src/lua_scripts/games . Overall it’s quite simple, the Lua/Rust APIs just call simple browser APIs to draw shapes and graphics. The harder part was being able to re-use the same code on Android and desktop (wxWidgets). Also I’m running into some WASM/browser limitations when trying to do heavy processing for board games AI.

What do people think of my hobby project, “AlexGames”: (F-Droid) (Web version) (Source on Github, AGPLv3).

It’s a collection of simple games, mostly solo or local multiplayer, though the web version supports network multiplayer by sending your friend a URL: solitaire, chess, go, reversi, checkers, minesweeper, backgammon, some word puzzle games, and some arcade type games.

I was planning on adding AI next. And I really should polish the Android app, I’ve mostly only focused on the web version. And if people want, I could also submit to Google Play. My calculator app seems to be a lot more popular on F-Droid than Google Play, so I haven’t bothered uploading this one to Google Play yet.

Happy to hear any feedback! I suspect that it looks too bland and unpolished for many people to be interested, or maybe it needs different kinds of games? My goal was to not need to download a bunch of ad filled free apps from the play store for when I wanted to play games with a friend on a flight or something, or just idly play something simple like solitaire.

edit: also in the Android app, stick to the “webview” version… the native Android version is mostly an experiment, I meant to hide it behind a setting but never got around to it.

Message me on matrix in #alexgames:matrix.org if anyone wants to try playing a multiplayer game together :)

(I’m not actually very good at chess or go)

I still prefer a physical SIM for my main cell plan, but when travelling to other countries it is so amazing to be able to just download an eSIM and avoid roaming fees. Airalo is quite convenient, but I hear it’s getting pricey compared to other options.

Plus with dual SIM I can disable roaming on my main SIM but still receive texts for free, but use data for cheap with the local eSIM at the same time.

Disclaimer: I live in Canada which has some of the most expensive cell plans in the world. Roaming in the US is $13 CAD/day and $16 CAD/day in the rest of the world. That seems like blatant extortion to me, they can’t blame Canada’s large size for expensive roaming fees (right?). I think US plans are a lot better, and I assume European cell plans are generally even cheaper.

Edit: I prefer physical SIMs for my main plan because if my main phone is dead or broken, I can just pop the physical SIM in an old phone that I bring while travelling. Until eSIMs can be somehow transferred like that, I don’t see myself using them for my main cell plan. Just remember to set a SIM PIN so that if someone steals your phone, they can’t use your SIM card to receive 2FA texts.

Edit 2: eSIMs are generally a pain to transfer between phones. I think my cell provider lets you do it online by scanning a QR code, but I know some make you call them and read 16 digit codes over the phone. Some even charge a small fee. I dread the day where other cell phone manufacturers follow what Apple did in the US (I think?) and make eSIMs the only option.

I really like Aegis for 2FA/TOTP:

https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis

Edit: also Element, a matrix client, for messaging: https://element.io/download

Edit 3: Feeder for RSS (Google Play), (F-Droid), I really like how you can extract the text of articles without ads.

Edit 4: Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, a bunch of simple puzzle games, no ads or BS (Google Play) (I think this is the right one: F-Droid). Fun fact: he created PuTTY.

Edit 2: also minidlna (apparently called ReadyMedia now) as a UPnP/DLNA server to host music and videos on your PC, then you can easily watch using VLC on a phone/computer (and any smart TV with the VLC app, probably) within the LAN. I’d be interested to hear any recommendations for how to easily access my UPnP server from outside my network from my phone. I’m sure there’s some way to do it with a VPN, but I’d rather only route the media streaming traffic through my home network, not all my phone’s traffic.