# CSSQuake

30 Hacker News commenters recommended CSSQuake and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a striking demo of what CSS can do, rendering a playable Quake-style map in the browser; the most common caveat is janky movement and collisions.

## Why people recommend it

- Impressive showcase of CSS (7 comments): "This is what I show my friends when they say CSS isn't a real programming language." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48626442)) "This is a great showcase of both the PolyCSS library and CSS itself!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619600)) "this is crazy i didn't know css could do this" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610026))
- Smooth framerate on modern hardware (4 comments): "it works like smooth butter under Chrome on an M2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610894)) "Wow, this is impressive. 60FPS, MacBook Air M1." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610118)) "cssquake was running at a smooth 60fps just now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614630))
- Praised as an impressive achievement (4 comments): "they took it to the next level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610820)) "This looks great, well done!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48720708)) "Also nice achievement...!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611154))
- Fun to inspect in DevTools (2 comments): "Using the Inspector on it is awesome. You can select each map piece." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48615623)) "Pretty fun to go into f12 and delete the enemy's face." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48617545))

## What people warn about

- Jerky movement and clipping (4 comments): "you get stuck on corners and it really doesn't like running up/down slopes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608744)) "A lot of jank. It would sometimes rubber band me back" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608709)) "the view keeps clipping out to far ahead of the map" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608693))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ball Pit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ball-pit.md): 14 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "CSSQuake", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cssquake/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).