Hey HN! I'm a huge fan of Love2D - a lightweight, open-source, 2D game engine. It's easy to use, cross-platform, and perfect for hobby projects, but it doesn’t officially support web deployment. I've been working on a game in my spare time, and wanted to see if I could get it running in the browser without rewriting it in something like Godot or Phaser.

After some trial and error, I hacked it together using Love.js (an unofficial Emscripten/WebAssembly port of Love2d) and Love.js-Api-Player, which lets Lua call JS functions. The result is a Love2D game running in the browser, with leaderboards and other web features.

The game is “What They Don’t Tell You About Living in New York” — an alpha-stage bullet hell dungeon crawler where you fight demons in an NYC skyscraper with psychic powers. It’s fast-paced, with 8-bit programmer art, and mechanics inspired by American Football.

As an experiment, I added a single-player esports twist: top leaderboard players win small prize pools I fund myself, paid out via P2P apps (PayPal, Cash App) or crypto (Dogecoin, Solana). It’s less about the money and more about how modern payment tech makes running these kind of micro-competitions possible for indie devs.

The tech stack is janky but works surprisingly well, and AFAIK, no one’s pushed Love2D this far into the web space before. Has anyone else messed with Love2D in the browser like this? I’d love feedback on the setup, the game, or the esports idea. Join the Discord (discord.gg/E8xxQdNERb) if you’re into Love2D or game dev tinkering!