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Nonograms – Friends-only puzzle room with replays and leaderboards

Nonograms – Friends-only puzzle room with replays and leaderboards

by siraben·Feb 18, 2026·5 points·2 comments
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AI Analysis

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Nonogram leaderboards with YouTube-style replays, but the genre is saturated.

Strengths
  • •Replay scrubber with KDE-style visualization makes watching others' solves feel like watching speedruns
  • •PWA + offline mode means true local-first gameplay, no forced connectivity
  • •Clean execution for a friend-group tool — no bloat, no analytics tracking
Weaknesses
  • •Nonogram games already exist (Simon Tatham's, Picross variants, mobile clones); no novel puzzle mechanics or algorithm
  • •Audience limited to friend groups sharing an invite code — viral potential nearly zero
Category
Gaming
Target Audience

Casual puzzle gamers, friend groups

Similar To

Simon Tatham Nonogram · Picross-style mobile games · Puzzle.com

Post Description

Invite code: hackernews. No email required for signup.

My friend group loves playing nonograms and competing against each other, but we always send each other screenshots of the solved game grid and time after the fact.

So from the start, I knew I wanted leaderboards, replays, and shareable links. I also added PWA support so it can be added to the home screen on mobile and an offline play mode.

No ads, analytics or nonsense, just nonograms.

Some other goodies as well such as YouTube-like scrubber and KDE-based visualization in replays.

https://github.com/siraben/nonograms/

Tech stack: React + TypeScript on Vite, hosted on Cloudflare Pages with D1 and Workers

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