SineRider: Hack Club teens resurrect a graphing game built for joy, not curriculum

SineRider began in 2013 as a teenager's Unity web game about sledding down graphs; it appeared at GDC's Experimental Gameplay Workshop in 2015, then vanished when browsers deprecated NPAPI and killed the Unity Web Player. The creator shelved it when he joined Hack Club in 2018, until community members took the project back off the shelf in 2022.

Rebuild a dead game in open-source vanilla JavaScript and let play carry the learning: endless graphing puzzles with infinite solutions, built for joy before curriculum.

A global team of 20+ teenagers in 8+ countries rebuilt SineRider in 100% vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript — static files that run on any HTTP server — as an open-source Hack Club project. Players edit functions such as y=sin(x) and a character sleds the resulting curve; every puzzle is an infinite well of valid solutions, presented through story levels, daily puzzles and a free lesson plan for teachers, all with a $0 advertising budget.

The Show HN on 8 May 2023 drew 181 points; commenters reported their children playing through every level and praised the equation UI as intentional rather than pressuring. The 2015 original had already been covered by Rock Paper Shotgun and recommended by Extra Credits' James Portnow, and the repository capture shows 623 stars, 51 forks and 1,375 commits.

SineRider started in 2013 when a bored teenager with a graphing calculator had an idea for a tiny game about sledding on graphs: the player edits functions and a character rides the curve through goals. Chris Walker built it as a Unity web game, and in 2015 it appeared at GDC's Experimental Gameplay Workshop, was covered by Rock Paper Shotgun, and was recommended by James Portnow of Extra Credits.

Then the game disappeared: browsers deprecated the NPAPI plugin structure, the Unity Web Player died, and SineRider with it. Walker shelved the project when he began working for Hack Club in 2018 — until May 2022, when community members took it off the shelf and turned it into a year of nights and weekends for a global team of 20+ teens in 8+ countries. They rebuilt the game in 100% vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript so it runs as static files on any HTTP server, and entered public beta on 8 May 2023.

The project's thesis is that educational games fail because institutions demand mandated play along a uniform curriculum, while games are voluntary by nature. SineRider instead builds for joy: every puzzle offers an infinite well of valid solutions, the game is free with a $0 advertising budget, and a teacher's lesson plan is an optional extra. The Show HN drew 181 points, with parents reporting their children played through all levels, and the repository shows 623 stars and 1,375 commits.

SineRider inverted the ed-tech formula: instead of bolting game mechanics onto a curriculum, it built a good game and let graphing concepts emerge from play.

Choosing 100% vanilla static JavaScript with no build step made the game trivially runnable and hackable, opening the codebase to teenage contributors on any laptop.

Resurrecting a beloved dead game gave the project a ready-made story and audience: the 2015 GDC pedigree and Rock Paper Shotgun coverage returned as credibility for the 2023 beta.

Open-sourcing under Hack Club turned a solo white whale into distributed labor: artists, musicians, programmers and puzzle designers could contribute on their own schedules.

Educational games fail when play is mandated; when the primary goal is joy, learning follows — build the game first and let understanding be the reward.

Hack Club continues to maintain SineRider as free open-source software. The Show HN thread surfaced bugs such as unskippable cutscenes and an accidental paste of a Reddit command, which the team tracked in GitHub issues and answered with promises of a skip button; the roadmap names mobile support, a custom level editor, adjustable graphics, multiple languages, daily puzzle previews and polar coordinates. The game remained playable at sinerider.com, which by capture time included daily-puzzle sharing commands for the community thread.