Battle Drones

What it is

Battle Drones is a browser real-time strategy (RTS) game by Simon Willison in which you command sci-fi drones, tanks and aircraft across an island map. On his blog, the author calls it "my latest vibe coded game experiment." Its most unusual feature is audio linking: two nearby devices pass game data to each other through their speakers and microphones, so you can play head-to-head without the internet. There's also an online mode that goes through a relay server on Fly.io, which the author says doesn't store anything.

Who it's for: Strategy fans who want to try something new, like linking two devices over sound.

Before you start: It runs in the browser, it's free and it needs no account; the author says it works on phones and desktops and can be cached for offline play. The page is in English. Audio linking asks you to allow your microphone. In the part of the code that was reviewed, it opens audio only, with no camera, and there's no sign of recording being saved or uploaded, though not all of the code was reviewed. The author warns that the high-pitched audio mode once gave him a headache. The online mode sends game commands to the relay server. The code is Apache-2.0 licensed; rights to third-party assets follow the repository's notes.

Based on the game page, the author's blog and the project repository. Not tested by AI Inspiration World.