NEXTURN
Find your next game in 3 minutes by swiping
NEXTURN's PH cycle ended a couple days ago. Modest numbers (5 followers, 1 thoughtful UX comment, 4 votes on the maker post), but the post-mortem is more useful than the metrics.
What worked:
- Tweet with @IGDBcom mention got noticed and reshared
- 1 detailed user feedback (Tinder framing causes initial 3-zone confusion — actionable and fair)
- Permanent product page = SEO + maker community visibility
What didn't:
- New account had no warm followers, no built-in audience to mobilize
- "Free, indie, technical" combo is PH's quiet zone — bursty launches skew toward AI/SaaS
- HN Show HN blocked for new accounts (warm-up needed, ~2 weeks)
Next:
- AlternativeTo this Saturday (account ages out tomorrow)
- r/webdev Showoff Saturday
- note essay on the brand-collision rebrand story (jp audience)
Distribution is a long-tail game. The aggregator submit cycle continues.
After 4 months of evenings and weekends, NEXTURN is live: https://nexturn.games
It's a swipe-based game discovery tool. Drag titles into 3 zones — love, interested, not for me — and the engine learns your taste, then recommends what to play next.
The "not for me" zone is the key. Most discovery tools only collect positive signal, which is why they keep recommending sequels of games you've already finished. NEXTURN propagates negative signal across genres, themes, and game modes.
Stack: Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind v4, framer-motion. IGDB API for game data. Vercel hosting.
Highlights:
- ~1200 hand-curated titles across 17 genres + IGDB fallback
- MMR diversity reranking (no all-AAA-action bias)
- Generates a shareable image of your taste profile
- Free, no signup, no ads, JP/EN supported
Hardest parts of the journey:
- Stripe rejected my legal page twice → migrated to Ko-fi
- Brand collision found 1 week before launch → full rebrand from "NEXT PLAY" to "NEXTURN"
- Drag jank on Android Chrome with 100+ swipes → 4x improvement with MessageChannel yields
Would love feedback on the swipe UX. Roast me 🙏
Comment