Neal Agarwal is an American programmer and game designer. He is known for his website, neal.fun, which hosts various browser games such as The Password Game and Infinite Craft. Many of his games have parodied internet conventions or served as educational games.[1]
Neal Agarwal | |
|---|---|
Agarwal in 2024 | |
| Education | Virginia Tech (BA) |
| Occupations | Programmer, game designer |
| Website | nealagarwal |
Early life and education
editAgarwal grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. He later attended Virginia Tech and graduated with a degree in computer science.[2][3]
Career
editIn 2006, at the age of nine, Agarwal created his first website, called Kidcrash, using a WYSIWYG editor, which compiled several of his favorite Adobe Flash games.[2][4] He then began programming on Scratch and made a "knockoff" of Wipeout at the age of 12.[2] Afterward, he learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.[5]
In high school, Agarwal created a mobile game, called Toast Man. He then created web-based projects on the website Kamogo such as Silicon Valley Idea Generator and Text to Hodor.[2]
neal.fun
editIn 2017, Agarwal launched his website, neal.fun, after which he began programming and listing his games on it. He worked on several of his first few games, like Spend Bill Gates' Money, as a student at Virginia Tech at the time.[2] His creations had been inspired by his own upbringing with Adobe Flash games on the internet, or what he called the "Weird Web 1.0": "I would always go down these long rabbit holes. It felt like much more of an independent web."[3][2]
By the time Agarwal graduated from Virginia Tech, he was able to make a full-time living from ad revenue on neal.fun, after which he continued to create more games and commit to neal.fun as a contribution to a possible "Weird Web 2.0."[3] He additionally runs Just For Fun, a website that showcases other instances of "creative coding."[6]
Briefly, Agarwal worked at MSCHF before deciding to focus on neal.fun fully.[2]
Works
edit- The Password Game (2023)
- Infinite Craft (2024)
- Stimulation Clicker (January 2025)
- Internet Roadtrip (since May 2025)
- I'm Not a Robot (September 2025)
- Spend Bill Gates' Money
- Ten Years Ago
- The Deep Sea
- The Size of Space
- Sell Sell Sell
- Size Of Life (2025) with illustrations by Julius T. Csotonyi [7]
References
edit- ^ Rosenberg, Yair (2025-01-27). "The Worst Page on the Internet". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ a b c d e f g Barrett, Brian. "Can anyone save the internet? Neal Agarwal is trying, one Hampster Dance at a time". Business Insider. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ a b c Agarwal, Neal; Dorokhina, Katya (6 January 2020). "Can the Weird Web make a comeback in 2020?". It's Nice That. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ Khosravi, Ryan (March 27, 2020). "Neal Agarwal is Keeping the Weird Web Alive". GlitchBlog. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ Ibrahim, Alif (15 October 2019). "Creative coder Neal Agarwal on bringing the internet back to its weird days". It's Nice That. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ Bogan, Daniel (2019-12-24). "Uses This / Neal Agarwal". Uses This. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
- ^ Agarwal, Neal [@nealagarwal] (10 December 2025). "Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :)" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 December 2025 – via Twitter.