While today is April Fools’ Day, this release is entirely real! You can install and play any of the games by visiting the Extensions Directory in the Netlify Dashboard. We welcome you to trigger a new deployment, play a game, or create your own to share with the community.

Netlify didn’t just invent automatic Git-based deploys and deploy previews, but was the first to bring build-time games mainstream, too. Netlify’s “Match the pairs” game is one of our most popular features–getting over a thousand plays daily and beloved by many more.

In a heated, emoji-fueled Slack thread in our Extensions team channel, it became apparent that we cannot claim we’re anti-walled gardens if such a popular feature is closed off, controlled by us, and is not extensible. So today, we’re excited to do right by our community by introducing the Netlify Entertainment System.

The NES, we proudly believe, is the most extensible SaaS dashboard gaming environment of all time. It’s powered by Netlify Extensions’ new UI surface for games and lets you choose to play additional games while waiting for your build to complete.

Perhaps you are tired of seeing the same logs again and again. Perhaps, unlike me, you aren’t anxiously looking at all the Netlify and GitHub checks to see if any early checks are failing and you need to fix your code again. Perhaps you’re a fan of XKCD 303 and want to honor it daily. Perhaps you had a Nokia 3310 and want to re-live the 2000s.

With that, let’s look at the games launching and available for you to play right now!

NES v1 release day games

Note: You will generally need to have a running build or a very recently finished build to see the option to play a game. Games are only available on a desktop or laptop device.

Snake

We had to start with this classic. Probably the first game in my life that I got to 100 hours on was Snake II on my hand-me-down Nokia 3310, my only electronic device in school for most of my school years.

Coded by Suzanne Aitchison.

Bugsweeper

Another classic for many office workers needing a way to pass the time in the past. Now, of course, we’re all super efficient and always focused on work. For this blog post, I looked at video gameplay of various versions of Microsoft Minesweeper, which this game is inspired by, and it’s clear that the Windows XP version is still the best one ever made. I wish we had made that one, but it was already perfect, so we went with our own interpretation!

Coded by Daniel Lew.

Tower of Hanoi

This is the second game I ever coded. Not this version, of course. My dad taught me recursion in the programming language “Logo” through this game, and ever since, this game has been very meaningful to me. Not so much that I would play it often. As you will see, if you try, it very quickly becomes almost impossible. The first level requires only seven steps to complete and is fairly satisfying the first time, but the third requires thirty-one steps. It gets much worse after that. I’d rather look at my app’s build logs and think about the meaning of life.

Coded by Ramon Snir.

Tile Flip

This is a brainy game inspired by “Lights Out”! If you don’t know the way to solve this puzzle, it can be very frustrating but also extremely satisfying to solve it. If you already figured it out or searched for the solution online, it’s still a nice way to pass the time. And very reminiscent of our original tile-based game.

Coded by Jorge Aguirre León.

Netliclicker

Are you mad that your colleague asked for a change? Are you eager to go outside, but the build just won’t complete? Let out your frustration on this stress ball of a game. Just click. And then click more. After a while, the game will let you click harder. And then harder. Trust me, it feels good. Let it go.

Coded by Philippe Serhal.

Build your own extension game

As usual with extensions, use of the SDK is open to anyone on any plan. You can read more about our Netlify SDK, or you can fork this game extension starter repository.

import {
  SiteBuildGameSurface
} from "@netlify/sdk/ui/react/components";
import { Game } from "../components/Game";
export const SiteBuildGame = () => {
  return (
    <SiteBuildGameSurface>
      <div>
        <Game />
      </div>
    </SiteBuildGameSurface>
  );
};

That’s it for this year’s April Fools’!

No matter your need, Netlify Extensions allow you to choose from integrations and specialized features that extend the value of the Netlify platform. Whether you’re integrating with popular tools like Auth0, Prisma Postgres, Supabase, and Contentful, or using new platform features such as Async Workloads, User Agent Blocker (for crawlers and SEO tools), or Content Security Policy, there’s an extension for every developer. You can discover extensions like these, and of course, games, in the in-app Extensions Directory and install them in a click.