I like that this is on the front page and there are no comments. I imagine because everyone is busy exploring and didn't yet go back to the comments to see what people think. Good sign!
LorenDB•Apr 29, 2026
Well, clearly you and I have made it out alive :)
SamBam•Apr 29, 2026
I only managed to get out once I had earned all 9 badges...
swyx•Apr 29, 2026
ah so you havent discovered the secret 10th badge yet, have you
ebipaul5194•Apr 30, 2026
Where I can see the badges
onehair•Apr 29, 2026
clearly xD
huseyinkeles•Apr 29, 2026
Really love all his work!
Check out the Space Elevator or Size of Life too.
jbombadil•Apr 29, 2026
I think there's a case for a corporate class action lawsuit against Neal for employee productivity loss every time every time a new game is published.
0x3444ac53•Apr 29, 2026
Lmao it's blocked on my corporate wifi
echelon•Apr 29, 2026
That's a crime. Your HR/IT are certifiably not fun.
swyx•Apr 29, 2026
dont make them the scapegoats. who was it that said "behind every rule on that wall is an idiot who made it necessary"
only-one1701•Apr 30, 2026
Found the manager
andrew_lettuce•Apr 30, 2026
Never Let common sense and trust do the job when another policy in the employee handbook can do the job!
> There is an urban myth that the release of Dragon Quest III caused a law to be passed in Japan banning the sale of Dragon Quest games or video games in general except on certain days such as weekends or national holidays. When III was released in Japan, over 300 schoolchildren were arrested for truancy while waiting in stores for the game to be released. The rumor claims there was a measurable dip in productivity when a Dragon Quest game was released and although muggings of Dragon Quest titles became so widespread that there were hearings in the Japanese Diet, no law was ever passed.
Aeolun•Apr 29, 2026
Arrested for truancy?
LeoPanthera•Apr 29, 2026
Truancy is a crime in many countries, including the USA.
buzzerbetrayed•Apr 29, 2026
An offense, sure. But it’s not a “crime” in the US.
thayne•Apr 30, 2026
Not for the student. But at least in some states, parents can potentially face jail time if their children miss enough school.
portmanteur•Apr 30, 2026
Kamala Harris bragged about enforcing this law against parents in California. That’s the only way that I know that it’s an actual law that gets enforced because I had never heard of laws like this before, and I grew up in US public schools in the South.
Gigachad•Apr 30, 2026
I seem to remember some similar discussion about when google put pacman in the google doodle.
bhresko1•Apr 29, 2026
I absolutely love this. Kind of gives me Club Penguin vibes.
jborichevskiy•Apr 29, 2026
I got taken back to Club Penguin as well. Especially clicking into the cave or treehouse and getting transported into a little side pocket of the map. Amazing work!
dtmooreiv•Apr 30, 2026
100%, briefly playing this brought me right back to that for a second. I'm glad others felt that same vibe.
xnx•Apr 29, 2026
Any tips for getting the right-click menu to work with a touchpad?
I two-finger tap, but the menu immediately disappears.
52-6F-62•Apr 29, 2026
Click + hold. Then move onto an option
xnx•Apr 29, 2026
Argh. No luck.
52-6F-62•Apr 30, 2026
:(
madebysnacks•Apr 29, 2026
So engaging! Made me smile the entire time
KerrickStaley•Apr 29, 2026
I love this! It reminds me of https://cursordanceparty.com/ which was built by a friend about 15 years ago and is still online :)
nerdsniper•Apr 29, 2026
The last seashell is eluding me. Otherwise I got all the badges.
lbebber•Apr 29, 2026
Near the title sign, on the center of the camp, is where I found the last one I missed
andrethegiant•Apr 29, 2026
Absolutely incredible. Well done Neal
biosubterranean•Apr 29, 2026
This is great
topherjaynes•Apr 29, 2026
Well, lads, 10 laps, been a day, going to sleep.
darshanmakwana•Apr 29, 2026
This is awesome! Where can I find the music from the DJ booth? I can listen to that all day
BrunoBernardino•Apr 29, 2026
Remember to have fun, people!
neurowave•Apr 29, 2026
Nice use of Rive!
hmokiguess•Apr 29, 2026
Sorry, what's Rive?
neurowave•Apr 29, 2026
Interactive engine for building apps, games, products with lots of motion https://rive.app
hmokiguess•Apr 29, 2026
Thanks! Didn’t know about it, looks fun
thatguymike•Apr 29, 2026
Well this is incredibly joyful, well done.
ceroxylon•Apr 29, 2026
When I see the domain of a post is neal.fun, I instantly get a huge grin because I know I am about to be delighted. Thank you Neal! The beach yurt with the mushroom soup was a hilarious touch.
ondrek•Apr 29, 2026
This is the reason I love Hckrnews.
subpar•Apr 29, 2026
firefly! iykyk
kami23•Apr 29, 2026
This reminds me of the old internet for some reason I can't really nail down, but maybe the club penguin-ess of it.
greengreengrass•Apr 29, 2026
Came to say the say thing. Strong Club Penguin feeling as soon as I saw that “off duty” sign on the lifeguard tower
nkmnz•Apr 29, 2026
This was fun!
spking•Apr 29, 2026
Touch virtual grass
danielrmay•Apr 29, 2026
Brilliant. If you needed proof the internet is still alive, here you go. I feel like Neal's creations are the result of creatively iterating on "what if" and "why not".
forsakenharmony•Apr 29, 2026
please don't re-implement mouse movement, this would work perfectly fine without and now it just feels really bad to use because my sensitivity is fucked
Macha•Apr 29, 2026
Yeah, whatever bug they have with this affected me two, was swinging my mouse across most of my desk to move any distance whatsoever.
duderific•Apr 29, 2026
I noticed this on Safari, but when I switched to Chrome it seemed fine.
asadm•Apr 29, 2026
except thats the whole point of this game. mouse movement needs to be controlled by the game here!
sgtlaggy•Apr 29, 2026
My mouse is set to 400 DPI, acceleration off (libinput flat profile), and default (0) sensitivity (range -1.0 - 1.0, no change at 1.0). Had similar settings on Windows, games have crazy high default sensitivity but websites like this have extremely low sensitivity. I had to crank my DPI up to 2000 to make it usable and 4000 to be comfortable and roughly match desktop settings, but this also made the cursor extremely unwieldy when pausing the game.
This and volume control are my biggest gripes.
dag11•Apr 29, 2026
The soul of this game requires that your cursor can go "behind" things (like trees, or partially submerged in water), can have subtle nudges to keep you on paths and add friction when in water, and also to be able to take full control of your cursor for the lazy river etc!
throw5•Apr 29, 2026
I really had fun with this one. You know what would make it even cosier? Being able to choose a small avatar for ourselves. The mouse pointer as your icon feels a very impersonal at the moment. Having avatars would make it feel more like we're all hanging out together in this wonderland.
stronglikedan•Apr 29, 2026
It's not what you asked for, but right click to choose an enhanced icon. (EDIT: Oops that appears to just be a temporary emoticon)
devilbunny•Apr 29, 2026
You can put the hat on. It's in the main camp building in a bedroom. Your cursor will be wearing a hat from then on.
ZeWaka•Apr 29, 2026
You can also put other clothes on, like sunglasses and shorts.
devilbunny•Apr 29, 2026
Can you don multiple items? Didn't try.
krackers•Apr 30, 2026
Yeah you can. You buy them with seashells.
hmokiguess•Apr 29, 2026
awww man that was fun!
tikimcfee•Apr 29, 2026
I had fun on the internet again. Thank you internet people <3
chrisshroba•Apr 29, 2026
This is such a breath of fresh air. I feel like I'm back on Club Penguin!
deviantony•Apr 29, 2026
I love Neal's creations so much !
buremba•Apr 29, 2026
I don't usually like my cursor to be hijacked but man, I like this one.
SlackingOff123•Apr 29, 2026
I can't get the 17th shell :(
alstonite•Apr 29, 2026
SPOILER
the two that are hard to find are 1. by the river on the far left and 2. at the main spawn point
bl4ckneon•Apr 29, 2026
One is kinda half hidden behind a tree on the far right and another one is next to the starting sign. The rest are on the beach area and very slightly off the beach area
dylkil•Apr 29, 2026
Weirdly i got slight motion sickness from this
mattlondon•Apr 29, 2026
Yeah same here - unexpected!
TheGRS•Apr 29, 2026
Well this is one of the most adorable things I've seen in a while. Thank you for sharing a little joy. So many little details I love, falling off the waterfall, the cursor size fading into the background, the flashlight in the cave. Haven't explored it all but going to share this right away.
ebbi•Apr 29, 2026
So much fun! I ended up playing beach volleyball with a bunch of people from around the world! :D excellent!
wg0•Apr 29, 2026
I thought its the 60 billion dollars one.
tiffanyh•Apr 29, 2026
Cool, but wow - my iPhone heats up super fast while on that site.
hadrien01•Apr 29, 2026
I'm really watching 12 Angry Men through a small window in a wonderfully cute browser game, I love it!
asadm•Apr 29, 2026
I wonder whats the multiplayer stack here. I haven't looked yet.
structuredPizza•Apr 29, 2026
We have achieved world peace, fanks Neal :)
antdke•Apr 29, 2026
That was a lot of fun. Brought back some nostalgia :)
melonpan7•Apr 29, 2026
It even works on mobile, brilliant.
GrifMD•Apr 29, 2026
That was delightful, what more can I say?
latexr•Apr 29, 2026
For the beach volleyball, aim to click only when the ball is in its downward trajectory.
WillieCubed•Apr 29, 2026
The art style here is really charming. Thanks for the whimsy today!
lanewinfield•Apr 29, 2026
Really putting the "fun" in "Neal.fun." Yet another amazing work by Neal Agarwal.
Nautman•Apr 29, 2026
I think it's incredible that you can feel a human connection with someone on the other side of the world purely by moving your cursors together. Just had a "game" of soccer with random people.
Well done, Neal!
0xferruccio•Apr 29, 2026
Incredibly well done by Neal as usual!! Always has new fun experiments that are always completely new concepts
parentheses•Apr 29, 2026
Legit first post I've wanted to upvote in a long time.
tschwimmer•Apr 29, 2026
Does anyone know how he is implementing country detection? I'm certain it's not GeoIP since my current IP address (and physical location) is different than the country it's showing me from.
GeoIP services can sometimes be wrong, they are essentially just lookup tables for IP subnets. I have a VPS in the Netherlands which most GeoIP providers detect as being in Czechia, for example. I assume whichever one the site is using just has the wrong country listed for your IP.
jp0d•Apr 30, 2026
It's the same for me. I'm in Australia and on my work laptop I'm connected to an American VPN. It's showing my location as USA. I was wondering how it's detecting the country.
tokioyoyo•Apr 29, 2026
Reminded me of Club Penguin days.
bovermyer•Apr 29, 2026
I loved the impromptu dance party I had in this with a bunch of people just bouncing on the stage.
wellthisisgreat•Apr 29, 2026
Cursor brethren, why y u no join me on my pink flamingo expedition
latexr•Apr 29, 2026
Badge Guide (to avoid spoilers, encoded with rot13¹):
* Cannonball!: Tb ba gur qvivat obneq va gur cbby. Fbhgurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbfvgvba.
* Treasure Hunter: Teno n zrgny qrgrpgbe gura frnepu arne gur yrsg fvqr bs gur ibyyrlonyy svryq. Abegujrfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbfvgvba.
* Goal!: Fpber n tbny jvgu gur fbppre onyy. Fbhgurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* S'more Please: Teno n znefuznyybj sebz gur ohpxrg naq chg gurz va gur ovt sver. Gnxrf nobhg gra frpbaqf. Abegurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Cat Person: Crg gur png va gur ubhfr. Abegujrfg arne gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Take a Seat: Fvg ba gjb punvef.
* Slide!: Tb ba gur ovt fyvqr. Rnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Beachcomber: Svaq nyy gur frnfuryyf.
* Green Thumb: Jngre gur irtrgnoyrf. Fbhgujrfg arne gur fgnegvat cbvag.
Is there anything to the weird book in the treehouse or is it just for flavor? It seems to be alluding to something but I can't figure it out.
krackers•Apr 30, 2026
There's mention of the cave and a "convergence point". I tried looking all around the cave, but there doesn't seem to be anything there (although you can find the drawings on the walls)
Edit: I looked at the source though and I don't see anything else clickable in the cave... No hidden secret badge either, maybe it is just for ambiance.
notsylver•Apr 30, 2026
There's also a locked door in one of the buildings, but I couldn't figure out what either mean if anything. It would be cool if the radio was used for something though
krackers•Apr 30, 2026
Yeah I saw that too, but the list of all accessible rooms is also in the code and the only scenes I see are
It would be really cool if there were some secrets, but alas it appears not (unless it's obfuscated in the source as well)
nickvec•Apr 29, 2026
Why not encode the badge names as well in rot13?
mh-•Apr 30, 2026
They've been encoded twice for extra protection.
latexr•Apr 30, 2026
Because then you’d need to decode the full message and might read something you didn’t mean to. This way you can decode just the individual ones you want.
The badge names aren’t secret, they’re available in the book in the house even before you unlock them.
steve_adams_86•Apr 30, 2026
The encoding is too advanced
bitwize•Apr 29, 2026
When I was a teenager we had the Living Books edition of Arthur's Teacher Trouble on CD-ROM as part of a "multimedia kit". Every page had short animations that would play by clicking on random things with your cursor, in addition to following along with the story, clicking on single words to hear them pronounced and spelled, etc. It was incredible and paved the way for similar phenomena like clickable Easter eggs in Homestar Runner cartoons.
This reminded me of that.
accCer•Apr 29, 2026
It was fun rick rolling you all on the piano. Vibe coded a little script that would play all kinds of melodies including rick roll. I eventually attracted a whole audience of cursors emoji reacting to it.
johnfn•Apr 29, 2026
This is so good! Using mouse motion as a control scheme is particularly genius - how did no one think of this before? I particularly like the points where the mouse control is taken away from you, i.e. when you float downstream, or when you go down a slide. It's also particularly genius how the mouse can 'teleport' around the screen (i.e. when you go into a door and come out somewhere else).
This idea could even be taken further - it would be really cool to have terrain that is more difficult to traverse. I'm also intrigued by the lack of walls. I think something like a hedge maze would be really fun!
only-one1701•Apr 30, 2026
He's done it again folks
deweywsu•Apr 30, 2026
SO much better than the metaverse, at 1/1000000th the cost!
arikrahman•Apr 30, 2026
I'm happily disappointed this has nothing to do with a certain electron based code editor fork.
The depth of this project is amazing. So many details that you can click into!
dadima•Apr 30, 2026
nice fun game
eranation•Apr 30, 2026
Just spent 20 minutes of my life, I don't want them back, was worth every second.
rohitpaulk•Apr 30, 2026
Nice one. Pleasantly surprised that this has nothing to do with Cursor the IDE
lacoolj•Apr 30, 2026
Lol Zed > Cursor but this Cursor > Zed
mindwork•Apr 30, 2026
neal.fun is the bestest place on the internet
lacoolj•Apr 30, 2026
Bug report. If i click a book on the phone my pseudo cursor goes away! :(
kang•Apr 30, 2026
I saw this experiment decades ago on the internet and it was to a music concert, i always wanted to do a cursor moshpit
quantummagic•Apr 30, 2026
With Firefox, moving the cursor is really unresponsive and difficult, at least with my touch-pad. Taking many swipes to move even a little bit in each direction. It's a much more enjoyable experience with Chrome.
rendaw•Apr 30, 2026
Me too, mouse.
testfrequency•Apr 30, 2026
This is why I could never commit to a Gecko based browser. There’s just too many daily sites I don’t have the patience to debug if it’s me or them.
TonyStr•Apr 30, 2026
Haha, this is hardly a daily site, is it? I can't remember the last time I experienced a firefox-specific browser issue before this. 95%+ of my issues usually come from ublock
testfrequency•Apr 30, 2026
No doubt, OP’s site is niche (and very cool!), but between weird graphical rendering I’ve experienced in the past with Firefox and WebGL, among a number of just flat out broken forms - I just gave up.
I want Gecko to succeed as Chromium being a bully in the web space has been unfortunate, though I’m even more rooting for Ladybird.
maccard•Apr 30, 2026
I've used Firefox as a daily driver for 20 years now (that's terrifying to say). I have to switch to another browser about once a month (although at a previous job I had to use $INTERNAL_WEBSITE in edge permanently). I have 0 issues with daily sites
testfrequency•Apr 30, 2026
20 years of Firefox consistent use is actually impressive. Thank you for your service!
maccard•Apr 30, 2026
I was indoctrinated as a teenager. A friends older brother was using it when he showed me World of Warcraft (not a euphamism) and I went home and downloaded it and never looked back.
I've contributed to a bunch of OSS, but for some reason never firefox.
Orygin•Apr 30, 2026
No issue on FF Macos with a touchpad
ForHackernews•Apr 30, 2026
Designed For Chromenet Explorer 6.0
nzeid•Apr 30, 2026
I'm a huge neal.fun fan but I still worried that this was some scammy LLM coding YouTube clickbait.
Love the joystick for mobile users.
benjian•Apr 30, 2026
coolest website i've seen in a while! absolutely loving this!
Jordan-117•Apr 30, 2026
Weirdly, this seems to kill my wifi connection after a minute or so (Firefox on Linux).
zhainya•Apr 30, 2026
This probably would have been fun if it worked.
latexr•Apr 30, 2026
Clearly it is working for many people. Perhaps if you share your setup and what exactly is the issue you’re facing, someone may have a suggestion. “It doesn’t work” is just about the worse “bug report” one can make.
ygyooo•Apr 30, 2026
That is so interesting!
rollyboo•Apr 30, 2026
A really enjoyable journey ;) Felt like a kid again, cheers!
lucy_hnatchuk•Apr 30, 2026
genuinely had a blast,felt like being a kid on a playground again.
RugnirViking•Apr 30, 2026
pretty hard to click through the cookie consent form because the browser hijacks the mouse and doesnt let it move to the right place. ended up using tab to click through it.
pred_•Apr 30, 2026
And the cookie consent form is one of those that require you to click a gazillion toggles. Hasn't it been established now that opt-out must be no harder than opt-in?
RugnirViking•Apr 30, 2026
the law unambiguously says that, yes. However, companies these days seem to respond to enforcement, not the text of the law. They are all using the same few cookie banner libraries/providers, so that they have herd protection (if the eu wants to crack down on it, it has to do it to hundreds/thousands of companies simultaneously). It seems neal chose that route also.
idk1•Apr 30, 2026
Well, that was absolutely delightful. What a tonic.
ultratalk•Apr 30, 2026
Strangely enough, when I enter the "convergence point" book, my cursor gets an American flag, even though it wasn't American before. Has anyone else seen this?
janmagnusdev•Apr 30, 2026
Anyone else having performance problems?
asimovDev•Apr 30, 2026
I love the cave paintings of cursor cavepeople
npw55036•Apr 30, 2026
That's awesome! It seems like all the rooms are accessible, but the football area is a bit laggy; the interaction feels like there's a lot of delay.
ggambetta•Apr 30, 2026
This is so well made! In the car racing track there's an overpass, and the cursor correctly Z-orders depending on whether you're coming from the upper or lower part of the track. Respect.
ebipaul5194•Apr 30, 2026
Nice game this is my first if able to add name that will be grate
victorbjorklund•Apr 30, 2026
Really cool. Sucks that they have to have the cookie banners though. I feel like this could have been done without user tracking in that way.
87 Comments
Check out the Space Elevator or Size of Life too.
> There is an urban myth that the release of Dragon Quest III caused a law to be passed in Japan banning the sale of Dragon Quest games or video games in general except on certain days such as weekends or national holidays. When III was released in Japan, over 300 schoolchildren were arrested for truancy while waiting in stores for the game to be released. The rumor claims there was a measurable dip in productivity when a Dragon Quest game was released and although muggings of Dragon Quest titles became so widespread that there were hearings in the Japanese Diet, no law was ever passed.
I two-finger tap, but the menu immediately disappears.
the two that are hard to find are 1. by the river on the far left and 2. at the main spawn point
Well done, Neal!
* Cannonball!: Tb ba gur qvivat obneq va gur cbby. Fbhgurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbfvgvba.
* Treasure Hunter: Teno n zrgny qrgrpgbe gura frnepu arne gur yrsg fvqr bs gur ibyyrlonyy svryq. Abegujrfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbfvgvba.
* Goal!: Fpber n tbny jvgu gur fbppre onyy. Fbhgurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* S'more Please: Teno n znefuznyybj sebz gur ohpxrg naq chg gurz va gur ovt sver. Gnxrf nobhg gra frpbaqf. Abegurnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Cat Person: Crg gur png va gur ubhfr. Abegujrfg arne gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Take a Seat: Fvg ba gjb punvef.
* Slide!: Tb ba gur ovt fyvqr. Rnfg sebz gur fgnegvat cbvag.
* Beachcomber: Svaq nyy gur frnfuryyf.
* Green Thumb: Jngre gur irtrgnoyrf. Fbhgujrfg arne gur fgnegvat cbvag.
¹ https://rot13.com
Edit: I looked at the source though and I don't see anything else clickable in the cave... No hidden secret badge either, maybe it is just for ambiance.
The badge names aren’t secret, they’re available in the book in the house even before you unlock them.
This reminded me of that.
This idea could even be taken further - it would be really cool to have terrain that is more difficult to traverse. I'm also intrigued by the lack of walls. I think something like a hedge maze would be really fun!
I want Gecko to succeed as Chromium being a bully in the web space has been unfortunate, though I’m even more rooting for Ladybird.
I've contributed to a bunch of OSS, but for some reason never firefox.
Love the joystick for mobile users.