# Hostile Volume

16 Hacker News commenters recommended Hostile Volume and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A browser puzzle game where you set a volume level through deliberately awkward interfaces; people find it funny and a good lesson in bad UI design, though some levels are hard or impossible on certain devices.

## Why people recommend it

- Fun and funny despite frustration (5 comments): "Great fun, well done to the horrible person who made it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382086)) "Hilarious, some of them are easy with the keyboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381343)) "This was more fun, in a dystopian kind of way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47379974))
- Teaches lessons about UI design (3 comments): "But I love the idea. It can actually teach you a lot of things about UI design." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389310)) "That feels like the ultimate volume UI puzzle heh." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380371)) "Diabolical villainy in this game" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389919))
- Clever, entertaining idea (3 comments): "Very interesting idea! Was happy when It was over haha good work!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387662)) "That feels like the ultimate volume UI puzzle heh." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380371)) "Had a lot of fun cool idea!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380511))

## What people warn about

- Some levels broken or impossible (3 comments): "The game was fun, but level 22 didn't work on Tor Browser due to CORS errors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381974)) "Looks like 17 cannot be finished on mobile though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380450)) "Level 27 is not possible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381966))
- Gave up on early levels (2 comments): "Laughed out loud but gave up at level 5" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380011)) "i manually used arrow keys to set it to by clicking right 25 times, and that didn't work, so i gave up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382228))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [TinyWind](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tinywind.md): 61 recommend
- [Starfling](https://hackerapproved.com/p/starfling.md): 59 recommend
- [Starcraft: Ashfall](https://hackerapproved.com/p/starcraft-ashfall.md): 46 recommend
- [Half-Life 2 in a Browser](https://hackerapproved.com/p/half-life-2.md): 42 recommend
- [Number Gacha](https://hackerapproved.com/p/number-gacha.md): 33 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Hostile Volume", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hostile-volume/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).